Today, identity is more than anything, economic. The technology used to create, utilize and protect identities is increasingly ill-matched to the economics and uses of identities. Identity theft is the misuse of private authenticating information to steal money. Protecting identity requires privacy. Proving identity requires exposing information. Together, these points illustrate that the near-term search for cheap identity management is a formula for long-term fraud resulting in ever-increasing identity theft.

The Economics of Identity Theft: Avoidance, Causes and Possible Cures, a professional book, discusses privacy as multi-dimensional, and then pulls forward the economics of privacy in the first few chapters. This book also includes identity-based signatures, spyware, and the placement of biometric security in an economically broken system, which results in a broken biometric system. The final chapters include systematic problems with practical individual strategies for preventing identity theft for any reader of any economic status. In conclusion, four startling previews of the future are written as scenarios.