All banks are not created equal when it comes to protecting you from identity theft, says Javelin Strategy & Research’s annual Banking Identity Safety Scorecard. The study looked at 24 top U.S. financial institutions, testing their ability to prevent, detect and resolve identity theft. The study probed each bank’s customer-facing capabilities and features, online as well as offline. Mystery callers, for example, phoned banks to learn more about how customer service issues are handled.

Of the 24 companies, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Washington Mutual scored highest in these tests. Bank of America’s high scores were boosted by the introduction of SiteKey, image and text checks that let people know they are on an authentic Bank of America Web site and also verify customers’ identities.

Joris Evers, a journalist for CNET News, details the report’s findings, pointing out that most banks do especially well in resolving identity fraud, such as dealing with disputed transactions on accounts. According to James Van Dyke, president of Javelin Strategy & Research, financial institutions focus much more on resolving problems after they occur rather than preventing them. The research company offers numerous suggestions for improving prevention methods, including allowing customers to set up e-mail or cell phone text message alerts.

In a recent InformationWeek article, journalist Thomas Claburn reported that the Identity Theft Task Force, a federal task force created by President George W. Bush to create solutions to fight identity theft, has issued several recommendations for combating identity theft. Among the task force’s proposed recommendations is offering free credit monitoring to identity theft victims. However, Jay Foley, executive director of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, disagrees with this recommendation, arguing that this service is of little help to identity theft victims.

According to Foley, the government deserves credit for moving in the right direction, but he is skeptical about the recommendation to consider extending free credit monitoring to victims. “At no time do I believe that free credit monitoring should be offered in a breach situation,” Foley says. “It’s nonsensical. It’s an unnecessary cost and expense. Credit monitoring is up to 70% accurate. It’s not effective enough to be viable.”

Foley believes that the government should instead focus its attention on policies and procedures for information redaction, since information that should not be published by government agencies continues to be posted online and elsewhere.

The U.S. State Department recently decided to add radio-frequency (RF) shielding to E-passports to address concerns about ’skimming’ of personal data while in use. Similarly, Kena Kai, a California-based design company, today announced a new line of DataSafe Wallets(TM) that incorporate RF shielding to protect “smart card” credit cards from wireless identity theft.

“Smart cards” or “Contactless Credit Cards” use “blink” technology that can be waved in front of a special reader, as well as being swiped through a traditional terminal. “This is the future. As the large credit card companies go after the fees attached to the $724 billion market segment of ‘under $25 transactions’ – that has traditionally been paid for with cash and therefore not provided them with their fees – we will be seeing a huge push for acceptance of these contactless credit cards and we want to make people aware that they need to take extra precaution with these cards,” offered Geb Masterson, president of Kena Kai, in a PR Newswire report.

The new DataSafe Wallet line will include leather bi-folds, tri-folds, credit card wallets, women’s wallets, and passport holders. The DataSafe Wallets will cost between $40 and $120.

The Commerce Department today annoucned that has lost as lost 1,137 laptop computers since 2001, most of them assigned to the Census Bureau. Of those, 246 contained some personal data, the department said in a statement. However, no personal information from any of the missing computers has been known to have been improperly used, the department said.

“All of the equipment that was lost or stolen contained protections to prevent a breach of personal information,” said Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez. “The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low.”

According to CBS in Denver, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers wants the State Legislature to pass new laws allowing authorities to issue the victims of identity theft special “passports” that would prove they are who they say they are. Suthers is pushing for an identity theft passport program similar to one that is already being used in Ohio.