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The Menace Of Identity Theft

Introduction: what is Identity Theft

The term Identity theft is used to refer to fraud that involves someone pretending to be someone else in order to steal money or to get other benefits. The term however is misapplied as it is not possible to steal an identity but only to use it. The person whose identity has been stolen can suffer from various consequences when he or she is held responsible for the perpetrator’s actions. In many countries, there are specific laws regarding identity theft which make it a crime to use another person’s identity for personal gain.

The term identity theft is somewhat different from that of identity fraud. However, the terms are often used interchangeably. Identity fraud is the consequence of identity theft. For instance, someone may steal or appropriate someone’s identifying information without actually committing identity fraud. The best example may be said to be when any data breach occurs. There has been very little evidence to link identity fraud to data breach. A study by Carnegie Mellon University concluded that the probability of becoming a victim to identity theft as a result of data breach is around 2% only.

Identity theft which is also known as ID theft is a crime in which criminals or offenders obtain key pieces of personal information such as social security or driver’s license numbers or any such other similar relevant data of someone else in order to pose as that person. Such data may be used to obtain credit, merchandise and services using the victim’s name. Identity theft can also be used by the thief to obtain false credentials for immigration or other applications.

One of the biggest problems with identity theft is that very often the crimes committed by the identity theft expert are often attributed to the victim and the burden of proof of innocence falls upon the victim that he was not responsible for whatever acts he may have been accused of.

In this article, we will get to know about the various aspects of this evil known as Identity theft, how it is done and how one may protect oneself from becoming a victim of such crime.

Types of Identity Theft

Identity theft can enter into many areas of our lives and involves any instance where a person uses someone else’s identification documents or other identifiers in order to impersonate that person for whatever reason. Identity theft may be broadly divided into two types namely; Financial Fraud and Criminal activities.

Financial Fraud: This type of identity theft includes bank fraud, credit card fraud, computer and telecommunications fraud, social program fraud, tax refund fraud and several more. Financial fraud may further be classified as:

• Business/ commercial identity theft wherein the offender uses the victim’s business name in order to obtain credit or other similar benefits.
• Financial identity theft wherein the offender uses the victim’s identity to obtain goods and services.
• Identity cloning and concealment where the offender uses the victim’s information to assume his or her identity in daily life and thus, deceiving others by impersonating himself as the victim. This may be done by a person in order to avoid arrest for crimes, by a person who is working illegally in foreign countries or by a person who is hiding from creditors or other individuals.
• Medical identity theft is where another’s information is used to obtain medical care or drugs. Such offence occurs when someone uses a person’s name and sometimes other parts of their identity such as insurance information, without the victim’s knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods. Medical identity theft frequently results in erroneous entries being put into existing medical records, and can involve the creation of fictitious medical records in the victim’s name.

Criminal activities: It is also known as criminal identity theft wherein the offender poses as the victim when he is apprehended for a crime. Identity theft may be used to facilitate crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism and espionage. In some cases, the criminal would obtain state issued ID using stolen documents or personal information belonging to another person or they might simply use a fake ID. When the criminal is arrested for a crime, he presents the fake ID to the authorities, who place charges under the identity theft victim’s name and release the criminal. When the criminal does not appear for the court hearing, a warrant would be issued in the name of the victim. The victim might learn of the incident if the state suspends their own driving license, or through a background check performed for employment or other purposes, or in rare cases, could be arrested when stopped for a minor traffic violation.

Furthermore, some people may impersonate others for non- financial reasons such as to receive praise or attention for the victim’s achievements. This is sometimes referred to as identity theft in the media.

Sometimes, the identity thieves hack into databases to steal personal information. However this type of thievery is much rarer then the use of old fashioned methods such as scouring the garbage for old receipts or looking over someone’s shoulder while they are doing a financial transaction. Therefore, one must be wary of such criminals anywhere where filling out a long application could provide a thief with enough information to inspire an identity theft.

Ways of obtaining personal information

In most cases, a criminal needs to obtain personally identifiable information or documents about an individual in order to impersonate them. They may succeed in doing so in the following ways:

• Stealing mail or rummaging through rubbish containing personal information. This practice is also known as dumpster driving.
• Retrieving information from redundant equipment like computer servers that have been disposed off carelessly.
• Researching about victim in government registers, internet search engines or public records search services.
• Stealing payment or identification cards, either by pick pocketing or surreptitiously by skimming through a compromised card reader.
• Remotely reading information from an RFID (radio frequency identification) chip on a smart cart, RFID- enabled credit card or passport.
• Eavesdropping on public transactions to obtain personal data. Such practice is commonly known as shoulder surfing.
• Stealing personal information from computers and computer databases (Trojan horses, hacking and zero day attacks)
• Data breach that results in the public (i.e. posted on the internet) or easily obtainable (i.e. printed on a mailing label) display of sensitive information such as credit card numbers, etc.
• Advertising bogus job offers (either full time or work from home based) to which the victims will reply with their full name, address, curriculum vitae, telephone numbers and banking details.
• Infiltration of organizations that store large amounts of personal information.
• Impersonating a trusted company/ institution/ organization in an electronic communication to promote revealing of personal information which is commonly known as phishing.
• Obtaining castings of fingers for falsifying fingerprint identification.
• Browsing social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc. online for personal details that have been posted by users.
• Changing the victim’s address thereby diverting billing statements to another location to either get current legitimate account information or to delay discovery of fraudulent accounts.
• Using false pretenses to trick a business (usually through a customer service representative) into disclosing customer information. This practice is known as pretexting.
• Stealing checks to acquire banking information, including account numbers and bank routing numbers.

The above are a few of the many ways in which an identity thief may obtain sensitive information relating to the victims.

Identity theft & identity fraud

As mentioned earlier, identity theft and identity fraud are different from each other but nowadays, these two terms are interchangeably used to refer to identity theft. Identity fraud involves impersonating the victim for economic gain, whereas identity theft involves stealing the victim’s credentials used for such impersonation. In the electronic realm, the victim’s identity information is surreptitiously recorded during online transactions by logging their keystrokes by seducing them into cons like phishing. The typical use of stolen identity credentials is to carry out online purchases that are billed to the victim and stolen identity information to open fraudulent bank accounts for obtaining loans on the victim’s name.

Position in India

The Indian legislature like those of other countries has recognized the threat Identity theft poses to the social and economic life of the country and in the year 2000, passed the legislation under the Information Technology Act 2000, Chapter IX.

Sec 43(b) of the aforementioned act provides that “if any person without the permission of the owner or any other person who is in charge of a computer, computer system or computer network,

(b) downloads, copies or extracts any data base or information from such computer, computer system or computer network including information or data held or stored in any removable storage medium;

He shall be liable to pay damages by way of compensation not exceeding one crore rupees to the person so affected.”

Ways to prevent identity theft

There is no hard and fast rule which guarantees that one shall never fall victim to some form of identity theft but one may take the following simple steps to protect oneself:

• One should destroy private records and statements and other documents that contain financial information.
• One may secure his mailbox by emptying it quickly, locking it or getting a P.O. box so that the criminals don’t have a chance to snatch sensitive information. Furthermore, one must never mail outgoing bill payments and checks from home.
• One must safeguard his/her identification cards such as social security number card, license, health insurance cards, etc.
• One must not leave a paper trail, i.e. ATM, credit card or gas station receipts behind.
• Whenever anyone contacts you asking for private identity or financial information, one must first confirm as to who is on the other end of the line, which company does he represent and the reason for the call.
• One must be careful at ATMs and while using phone cards. Shoulder surfers can get their account and PIN numbers.
• Never give personal information of any kind over the telephone or online unless you initiate the contact. Furthermore, never give out any of your personal information to telemarketers.

Conclusion

Identity theft is an evil which has grown on a large scale with the advancement of technology and dealings in day to day life. The irony is that though these technological advancements have contributed to simplify our lives (for instance, one does not have to stand in long ques just to pay their telephone bills which can be easily done by the click of a button on the internet) but at the same time it has made our lives much more complicated by giving rise to new forms of crimes such as identity theft along with many more for which we have to be cautitious when dealing with sensitive information such as passwords and other data which might pose a threat to our security and integrity as well as the security of the country as a whole. Though many countries have passed various legislation to neutralize this menace but in the present scenario, the crimes relating to identity theft is still booming with little effect of these legislations on them.

Thus the best way to check this problem depends upon the people who might be the probable targets of these identity thieves and this includes everyone who is a part of the population of the country and abroad. They must be really careful while disclosing sensitive data on the net, ATMs, telephone or any other place where someone might be able to take advantage of the data disclosed by you for their own benefits. In this way will be able to deter such criminals from committing such crimes and in the long run, protect ourselves from becoming the victims of these criminals.

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