05 January 2011
Identity theft is a crime where the thief steals or assumes another person’s identity to gain access to that person’s resources, credits or benefits. The victim of identity theft can have his identity and credits used for the identity thief’s advantage. In most cases the victim can even be held liable for the criminal actions done by the identity thief in the victim’s name.
Identity theft is actually a misnomer since it is not really possible to steal a person’s identity. More accurate terms might be identity cloning, identity fraud or impersonation. However, since 1964, that term has stuck.
One method of accessing personal data is from redundant IT equipment and storage media which have been given away
There are 5 categories of identity theft.
- Business or Commercial Identity Theft involves using another business’ name to obtain credits.
- Criminal Identity Theft is made when a person poses as another person when he is apprehended for a crime.
- Financial Identity Theft occurs when a person assumes the identity of another in order to gain access to the victim’s credits, goods and other benefits.
- Identity Cloning is when a person poses as another person in his day-to-day activities.
- Medical Identity Theft is yet another category whereby the thief assumes the identity of another individual in order to avail of medical services and drugs.
The following are ways by which identity thieves steal information. From these one can devise means by which identity theft can be prevented.
- Dumpster diving or rummaging through rubbish to obtain personal information
- Accessing personal data from redundant IT equipment and storage media which have been given away, thrown away at public dump sites or sold without erasing personal information first
- Using personal information from public records of individual citizens
- Stealing bank cards, credit cards, passports and other identity bearers. This is accomplished by stealing these items from the mail, breaking into a house to steal these items or by pick pocketing.
- Using hand-held card readers to skim for personal information on bank and credit cards
- Creating clone cards
- Using contactless card readers to obtain information from RFID-enabled passports
- Shoulder surfing or observing users as they log in their names and passwords in public computers
- Stealing personal information using malicious malware and spyware such as Trojan Horse
- Hacking computer systems, networks and databases usually involving large volumes of personal data
- Exploiting breaches which result in the publication or partial disclosure of personal information
- Bogus advertising job offers used to collect applications or resumes containing personal information
- Privileged IT users which exploit their insider access to gain personal information using their employers’ system
- Breaking into organizations which store large amounts of personal information
- Phishing or collecting personal data via fake corporate websites, SMS or phone calls done by acting as a trusted organization
- Using inspired guess work to decode weak passwords
- Casting fingers to falsify finger marks or using gummy bears to dupe low-quality fingerprint scanners
- Looking for personal information published by users publicly in social networking websites
- Diverting a person’s email to gain access to personal information
- Impersonating a person to trick help desk workers and customer service representatives into disclosing personal information such as log-in credentials and using password changing rights
- Stealing checks in order to get critical banking information
- Guessing Social Security Numbers by using personal information found in social networking sites
