When I was speaking with a representative of one of the credit reporting agencies, he said that anyone could just make up a social security number, send it in along with their name, and they might be able to obtain credit.
Perhaps the laws have changed in the four years since my identity theft, but companies must be held responsible for our troubles when they issue credit to the wrong person.
Here we are obsessing over our credit reports and some companies can't be bothered with checking a few basic pieces of information.