"With that information, an identity thief could open up new accounts in her [the dog-owner's] name," said Betsy Broder, an identity fraud expert with the Federal Trade Commission, "because the identity thief has virtually all the information that he or she needs to open up a credit card account, seek employment if they don't have legal status in this country, apply for a driver's license or, if they are arrested for some crime, use this other person's identity as their own."

Note from Betsy Broder's comments that the stakes of identity theft have risen from the bad-enough hassle of clearing your name of fraudulent credit cards: more and more bad guys are committing crimes in victims' names to avoid harsher sentences based on their own records. Some victims have spent time in jail due to this criminal use of their names.

Identity theft is a serious problem, and it will only get worse as more court records are scanned onto the Internet. The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has an extensive paper explaining the issues.

The Post also has a story Data Breaches, Thefts on the Rise by Ellen Nakashima explaining that:

Companies, government agencies, schools and other institutions are spending more to protect ever-increasing volumes of personal data such as credit card and Social Security numbers with more sophisticated firewalls and encryption, but the investment often is too little, too late.

That story references the detailed (136 page pdf) and ever-expanding breach database of the Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego.