It seems knowing a person's name and address is pretty much all that's needed for identity theft, no?
Couldn't those two variables enable one to pose as another person successfully? Given so, it makes it much, much easier to steal someone's identity with such easily obtainable things than would be for other difficult means (like phishing, hacking someone's personal account/computer, etc.).
Simply knowing an address where a person lives and their full name seems to be all that's needed to kickstart identity theft, and from what I can tell both of those things can be extremely easy to get.
So is a name and an address linked to that name all that's needed to steal a person's identity?
Imagine, for example, that you call a bank to say that you forgot your account number, but you provide the name of the person's account you're looking for plus their address and account type. Isn't that halfway to accessing someone's account already? I'd imagine not much else would be needed. They can't ask for social security number over the phone, and this sounds like a thief's dream.