Identity theft

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Identity theft is the use of another person's deliberate identity, usually as a method for obtaining financial gain or obtaining credit and other benefits on behalf of another person, and possibly loss or loss of another person. Persons whose identities have been assumed can suffer adverse consequences, especially if they are responsible for the offender's actions. Identity theft occurs when someone uses someone else's personal identity information, such as their name, identification number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term "identity theft" was created in 1964. Since then, the definition of identity theft has been officially established throughout the UK and the United States as the theft of personally identifiable information, generally including a person's name, date of birth, social security number, SIM card number, bank account or credit card number, PIN number, electronic signature, fingerprint, password or any other information that may be used to access one's financial resources.

Determining the relationship between data breaches and identity theft is challenging, especially since identity theft victims often do not know how their personal information is obtained, and identity theft can not always be detected by individual victims, according to a report made to the FTC. Identity fraud is often but not always a consequence of identity theft. A person can steal or misuse personal information without then performing identity theft using information about everyone, such as when major data breaches occur. A US Government Accountability Office study determined that "most violations do not result in identity-theft detected incidents". The report also warned that "completely unknown". A study not later published by Carnegie Mellon University notes that "Most often, the cause of identity theft is unknown," but reports that others concluded that "the possibility of becoming a victim of identity theft as a result of data breach is... about only 2%". Recently, an association of consumer data companies noted that one of the largest ever data breaches, which caused more than four million records, resulted in only about 1,800 cases of identity theft, according to companies whose systems were violated.

An October 2010 article entitled "Cyber ​​Crime Made Easy" explains the level of hackers who use malicious software. Like a security expert named Gunter Ollmann said, "Interested in credit card theft? There is an application for it." This statement concludes the ease with which these hackers access all types of online information. The new program to infect a user's computer is called Zeus; and the program is so friendly to hackers that even inexperienced hackers can operate it. Although the hacking program is easy to use, that fact does not reduce the damaging effects that Zeus can (or other software like Zeus) to your computer and users. For example, the article states that programs like Zeus can steal credit card information, important documents, and even documents necessary for internal security. If the hacker wants to get this information, it means identity theft or even the possibility of a terrorist attack. The ITAC says that about 15 million Americans have their identities stolen, by 2012.

Video Identity theft

Type

Resources such as Identity Theft Identity Identity Theft divide identity theft into five categories:

• Criminal identity theft (disguised as someone else when arrested for crime)
• Financial identity theft (using someone else's identity to get credit, goods and services)
• Identity cloning (using other people's information to assume their identity in everyday life)
• Medical identity theft (using someone else's identity for medical care or medication)
• Child identity theft.

Identity theft can be used to facilitate or fund other crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism, phishing and espionage. There are cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, including online credit card processing and health insurance.

Identity cloning and concealment

In this situation, identity thieves imitate the identity of others to hide their own identity. Examples might be illegal immigrants, people hiding from creditors or other individuals, or those who just want to be "anonymous" for personal reasons. Another example is posers , labels given to people using photos and other people's information through social networking sites. Most, posers create credible stories that involve friends of the people they actually imitate. Unlike identity theft used to get credit that is usually exposed when debt increases, concealment can continue indefinitely undetected, especially if identity thieves can obtain fake credentials to pass various authentication tests in everyday life.

Criminal identity violation

When a criminal identifies himself as a policeman as another individual at the point of arrest, it is sometimes referred to as "Theft of Criminal Identity." In some cases, previous criminals have obtained identity documents issued by the state using credentials stolen from others, or simply showing fake IDs. As long as the work of trickery, the cost can be placed under the name of the victim, let the criminals get away. Victims can only learn about the incident by chance, for example by receiving a court call, finding that their driver's license is suspended when terminated for minor traffic violations, or through background checks conducted for work purposes.

It is difficult for victims of criminal identity theft to clean up their records. The steps required to remove the wrong criminal record from the victim depends on where the crime jurisdiction occurred and whether the true identity of the criminal can be determined. Victims may need to seek out the original capturing officers and prove their own identity in some reliable way such as fingerprints or DNA tests, and may need to go to court to be released from the indictment. Obtaining the expulsion of court records may also be required. The authorities may permanently retain the victim's name as an alias for the real identity of criminals in their criminal record database. One problem that criminal identity theft victims might encounter is that various data collectors may still have the wrong criminal record in their database even after the court and police records are corrected. Thus it is possible that future background checks will return the wrong criminal record. This is just one example of the kind of impact that may continue to affect identity theft victims for months or even years after the crime, in addition to the 'cloned' psychological trauma usually arises.

Synthetic identity theft

The recent identity theft variation is becoming more common is synthetic identity theft , where the identity is completely or partially created. The most common techniques involve combining real social security numbers with names and dates of birth other than those associated with the number. Synthetic identity theft is harder to track because it does not appear on a person's credit report directly, but can appear as an entirely new file in the credit bureau or as a subfile on one of the victims' credit reports. Synthetic identity theft is especially detrimental to creditors who inadvertently give credit to fraudsters. Individual victims can be affected if their names get confused with synthetic identities, or if the negative information in their subfilter affects their credit ratings.

Medical identity theft

Privacy researcher Pam Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum, created the term medical identity theft and released the first major report on the issue in 2006. In the report, he defined the crime for the first time and made the victims' suffering public. The definition of a crime report is that medical identity theft occurs when a person seeks medical care under someone else's identity. Theft of insurance is also very common, if the thief has your insurance information and or your insurance card, they can seek medical attention as yourself. In addition to the risk of general financial loss for all forms of identity theft, a medical history of thieves can be added to the victim's medical records. Inaccurate information in the victim's record is difficult to repair and may affect future insurance or cause the doctor to rely on misinformation to provide inappropriate medical care. Following the publication of the report, which contains the recommendation that consumers receive notice of a medical data infringement incident, California passed this law obliging, and finally HIPAA expanded to also require a medical offense notice when the offense affected 500 or more people. Data collected and stored by hospitals and other organizations such as medical aid schemes up to 10 times more valuable for cyber criminals than credit card information.

Child identity theft

Child identity theft occurs when a person's minor identity is used by someone else for personal gain. Fraudsters can be family members, friends, or even strangers who target children. Child Social Security numbers are valued because they have no information related to them. Thieves can establish lines of credit, obtain driver licenses, or even buy a home using a child's identity. This scam can go undetected for years, as most children do not find problems until years later. Child identity theft is fairly common, and research shows that the problem is developing. The largest study of child identity theft, as reported by Richard Power of Carnegie Mellon Cylab with data provided by AllClear ID, found that out of 40,000 children, 10.2% were victims of identity theft.

Financial identity theft

The most common type is financial identity theft, in which one wants to gain an economic advantage on behalf of another. This includes obtaining credit, loans, goods and services, claiming to be someone else.

Maps Identity theft

Techniques for obtaining and exploiting personal information for identity theft

Identity thieves usually obtain and exploit personally identifiable information about individuals, or the various credentials they use to authenticate themselves, to impersonate them. Examples include:

• Ransacking the garbage for personal information (dumpster diving)
• Retrieve personal data from IT equipment and excessive storage media including PCs, servers, PDAs, mobile phones, USB memory sticks and hard drives that have been disposed of in a public landfill, provided or sold without proper cleaning.
• Using public records of citizens, published in official lists such as voter lists
• Stealing your bank or credit card, identity card, passport, authentication tokens... usually by pickpocketing, theft of junk or mail
• Common question schemes that offer account verification and compromise: "What is your maiden's name?", "what is your first car model?", or "What is your first pet's name?", etc.
• Filter information from your bank or credit card using a compromised or grasped card reader, and create a cloned card
• Use a "no contact" credit card reader to get data wirelessly from an RFID-capable passport
• Surf-Shoulder, involving an individual who secretly monitors or hears others provide valuable personal information. This is mainly done in crowded places because it is relatively easy to observe someone when they fill out a form, enter a PIN number at an ATM or even type a password on a smartphone.
• Steals personal information from computers that use browser security breaches or malware such as the Trojan horse keystroke logging program or other forms of spyware
• Hack computer networks, systems, and databases for private data, often in bulk
• Utilize violations that result in the publication or disclosure of more restricted personal information such as name, address, Social Security number or credit card number
• Advertise bogus job offers to collect resumes and apps that usually reveal the applicant's name, home address and email, phone number, and sometimes their banking details
• Utilize insider access and abuse privileged user IT privileges to access private data in their employer systems
• Infiltrate organizations that store and process large amounts of valuable personal information
• Imitate the identity of trusted organizations in emails, SMS text messages, phone calls, or other forms of communication to trick victims into disclosing their personal information or login credentials, usually on fake company websites or phishing forms
• Brute-force attacks weak passwords and uses inspired allegations to compromise weak password reset questions
• Obtain fingerprints to falsify fingerprint identification.
• Browse social networking websites for personal details published by users, often using this information to appear more credible in subsequent social engineering activities
• Redirecting victims' emails or posts to obtain personal information and credentials such as credit cards, bills and credit card/bank statements, or delaying discovery of new accounts and credit agreements opened by identity thieves in victim names
• Use fake pretenses to trick individuals, customer service representatives, and help desk workers to disclose personal information and login details or change a user's password/access rights (pretext)
• Stealing checks for banking information, including account numbers and bank codes
• Guess Social Security numbers by using information found on social networking of the Internet such as Facebook and MySpace
• Low security/privacy protection on photos that are easy to click and download on social networking sites.
• Make friends with strangers on social networks and leverage their trust until personal information is provided.

src: www.fightidentitytheft.com

Indicator that you may be a victim of identity theft

The majority of victims of identity theft do not realize that they are victims until they have a negative impact on their lives. Many people do not know that their identity has been stolen until they are contacted by a financial institution or find suspicious activity in their bank account. According to an article by Herb Weisbaum, everyone in the US should assume that their personal information has been compromised at one point. It is therefore very important to be alert to warning signs that your identity has been compromised. Here are ten indicators that others may use your identity.

1. Credit or debit card charges for goods or services you do not know, including unauthorized withdrawals from your account
2. Receive a call from the card or credit card fraud control department that warns of suspicious activity on your credit card account
3. Accept credit cards you have not applied
4. Receive information that the credit assessment investigation has been conducted. They are often done when a loan or phone subscription is applied.
5. Check bounced for lack of money in your account to cover the amount. This may be caused by an unauthorized withdrawal from your account
6. Criminal identity theft can commit a crime with your personal information. You may not realize this until you see the police at your door catching you for a crime you did not commit.
7. A sudden change to your credit score may indicate that someone else is using your credit card
8. Charges for services such as gas, water, electricity do not arrive on time. This could be an indication that your mail was stolen or transferred
9. Not approved for a loan because your credit report shows that you are not eligible for a credit
10. Receive a notification from your post office notifying you that your mail is forwarded to another unknown address
11. Your annual tax return shows that you have earned more than you actually earn. This may indicate that someone is using your national identification number, e.g. SSN to report their earnings to tax authorities

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Individual identity protection

The acquisition of a personal identifier is made possible through a serious privacy violation. For consumers, this is usually the result of those who naively provide their personal information or login credentials to identity thieves as a result of being cheated but identity-related documents such as credit cards, bank statements, electricity bills, checkbooks, etc. It may also be physically stolen from vehicles, homes, offices, and not a few mailboxes, or directly from victims by pickpockets and bag snatchers. Personally identifiable consumer trust is the most common intervention strategy recommended by the US Federal Trade Commission, Canadian Phone Busters and most sites that handle identity theft. Such organizations offer recommendations on how individuals can prevent their information from falling into the wrong hands.

Identity theft can be partially mitigated by not identifying unnecessary ones (a form of information security control known as risk aversion). This implies that IT organizations, systems and procedures should not require too much personal information or credentials for identification and authentication. Require, store and process personal identifiers (such as Social Security number, national identification number, driver's license number, credit card number etc.) Increase the risk of identity theft unless this valuable personal information is secure at all times. Doing a personal identifier to memory is a good practice that can reduce the risk of prospective identity thieves from obtaining this record. To help remember numbers like social security numbers and credit card numbers, it is helpful to consider using mnemonic techniques or memory aids such as the Major System of mnemonics.

Identity thieves sometimes imitate the dead, using personal information obtained from death notices, gravestones and other sources to exploit delays between the death and closure of the person's account, the inability of the bereaved family and the weaknesses in the credit check process. Such crimes may continue for some time until the family dies or the authorities notice and react to anomalies.

In recent years, commercial identity theft protection/insurance services have become available in many countries. These services are intended to help protect individuals from identity theft or help to detect that identity theft has occurred in exchange for monthly or annual membership or premium fees. Services typically work best by setting fraud alerts on individual credit files with three major credit bureaus or by arranging monitoring of credit reports with credit bureaus. While identity theft protection/insurance services have been widely marketed, their value has been questioned.

src: www.efr.org

Identity protection by organizations

In their May 1998 testimony before the United States Senate, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) discusses the sale of Social Security numbers and other personal identifiers by credit appraisers and data miners. The FTC approves the principle of industrial self-regulation that limits access to information about credit reports. According to industry, the restrictions vary according to customer category. Credit reporting agencies collect and disclose personal information and credit to a broad business client base.

Poor management of personal data by organizations, resulting in unauthorized access to sensitive data, may expose individuals to the risk of identity theft. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse has documented more than 900 individual data breaches by US corporations and government agencies since January 2005, which together have involved over 200 million total records containing sensitive personal information, many of which contain social security numbers. Poor corporate persistence standards that may result in data breaches include:

• failure to break up confidential information before dumping it in the trash
• failure to ensure adequate network security
• credit card numbers stolen by call center agents and people with access to record calls
• the theft of laptop computers or portable media brought out of the site containing large amounts of personal information. The use of strong encryption on this device can reduce the possibility of data being misused if a criminal gets it.
• intermediate personal information to other businesses without ensuring that buyers have adequate security controls
• Failure of the government, when registering sole proprietorships, partnerships, and companies, to determine whether the officers registered in the Articles of Association are who they say they are. This could potentially allow criminals access personal information through credit ratings and data mining services.

The failure of corporate or government organizations to protect consumer privacy, client confidentiality and political privacy has been criticized for facilitating the acquisition of personal identities by criminals.

Using various types of biometric information, such as fingerprints, for identification and authentication has been cited as a way to hinder identity thieves, but there are limitations to the technology and privacy issues associated with this method as well.

src: idahoseniorindependent.com

Legal response

International

In March 2014, after it was discovered that two passengers with stolen passports were on a Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 plane lost on March 8, 2014, it was revealed that Interpol kept a database of 40 million travel documents lost and stolen from the 157 countries it made available to the government and communities, including airlines and hotels. Nevertheless, the Stolen and Lost Travel Document database (SLTD) is little used. The UAE-based News Network, observes that Interpol Secretary-General Ronald K. Noble told a forum in Abu Dhabi the previous month that this was the case. "The bad news is that, while very effective and applicable anywhere in the world, only a handful of countries systematically use SLTD to filter tourists, the result is a huge gap in our global security apparatus vulnerable to exploitation by criminals and terrorists," Noble was quoted as saying.

Australia

In Australia, every state has enacted laws that deal with various aspects of identity or fraud issues. Some states have now amended relevant criminal laws to reflect identity theft crimes, such as the 1935 Conservation Law Crime Act (SA), the Crime Amendment (Fraud, Identity and Counterfeit Force) Act of 2009 and also in Queensland under the Criminal Code of 1899 (QLD). Other states and territories are in a state of development with respect to the identity-related regulatory framework such as Western Australia in Bill Bill's 2009 Bill Crime Bill.

At the Commonwealth level, under the Criminal Code (Amendment, Theft, Fraud, & Related Inquiry) Act 2000 that amends certain provisions of the Criminal Code Act 1995 ,

Between 2014 and 2015, there are 133,921 fraud and fraud scams in Australia, up 6% from the previous year. The total costs reported by the Prosecutor General's Department are:

There are also high associated indirect costs as a direct result of an incident. For example, the total indirect costs for frauds recorded by police are $ 5,774,081.

135.1 General dishonesty

(3) A person is guilty of a violation if a) the person does something for the purpose of dishonesty causing harm to others ; and b) the other person is a Commonwealth entity. Penalty: Prison for 5 years .

Likewise, each state has enacted its own privacy laws to prevent misuse of personal information and data. The Commonwealth Privacy Act applies only to Commonwealth and territory institutions, and to certain private sector agencies (where for example they deal with sensitive records, such as medical records, or they have more than $ 3 million in turnover PA).

Canada

Under section 402.2 of Criminal Code,

Every person commits an offense that consciously obtains or has other person's identifying information in a situation which raises a reasonable conclusion that the information is intended to be used to commit an alleged offense that includes fraud, fraud or error as an element of infringement.

guilty of an alleged offense and punishable for a period of not more than five years; or guilty of offenses sentenced to summary.

Under section 403 of Criminal Code,

(1) Everyone commits an offense that deceives others, lives or dies,

(A) with a view to profit for themselves or others; (b) with a view to acquiring any property or interest in any property; (c) with a view to harming the personified person or another person; or (D) in order to avoid arrest or prosecution or to impede, distort or defeat the course of justice. guilty of an alleged and punishable offense for a period of not more than 10 years; or guilty of offenses sentenced to summary.

In Canada, the Privacy Act (federal law) only covers the federal government, agents and corporations. Each province and region has its own privacy laws and privacy commissioners to limit the storage and use of personal data. For the private sector, the purpose of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act (2000, c. 5) (known as PIPEDA) is to establish rules for organizing the collection, use and disclosure of personal information; except for the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia where provincial laws have been considered very similar.

French

In France, a person convicted of identity theft can be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined up to EUR 75,000.

Hong Kong

Based on HK Law. Chap 210 Theft Ordinance , seconds. 16A Fraud

(1) If any person with any deceit (whether guile is the sole or prime persuasion) and with intention to deceive induce others to take an action or make omissions,

(A) in useful to anyone other than the second mentioned; or (b) in the prejudice or substantial risk of prejudice against anyone other than the former, the first person commits a fraudulent offense and is responsible for the belief in the indictment to imprisonment for 14 years .

Under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance , it establishes a Privacy Commissioner post for Personal Data and mandates how much personal information can be collected, stored, and destroyed. The law also grants citizens the right to request information held by businesses and governments to the extent provided for by this law.

India

Under the Information Technology Act 2000 Chapter IX Sec 66C

SECTION 66C

PUNISHMENT FOR IDENTITY DESTRUCTION Anyone, cheaters or dishonest use electronic signatures, passwords or other unique identification features of others, shall be sentenced to imprisonment with any of the descriptions for terms that may extend to three years and also will be liable for fines which may extend to one lakh rupee.

Philippines

Social networking sites are one of the most well-known spreaders of posers in the online community, giving users the freedom to place whatever information they want without verifying that the account is being used by the real person.

The Philippines, which ranks eighth in the number of Facebook users and other social networking sites like Twitter, Multiply, and Tumblr, has been known as the source of various identity theft issues. The identity of people who carelessly put personal information on their profiles can be easily stolen with just a simple search. There are people who meet online, get to know each other through free Facebook chats and exchange messages that then lead to sharing personal information. Others are romantically involved with their online friends so they tend to give too much information like social security numbers, bank accounts and even basic personal information like home address and company address.

This phenomenon leads to the creation of Senate Bill 52: The Cyber ​​Crime Prevention Act of 2010. Part 2 of the bill states that it recognizes the importance of communication and multimedia for the development, exploitation and dissemination of information but offenders will be punished by law through imprisonment or a fine of Php200,000, but not exceeding 1 million, or depending on the damage caused, or both (Section 7).

Swedish

Sweden has little problem with identity theft. This is because only Swedish identity documents are accepted for identity verification. Stolen documents can be tracked by banks and some other institutions. The banks have an obligation to check the identity of the person who withdraws the money or get the loan. If the bank gives money to someone using identity documents reported stolen, the bank must take a loss. Since 2008, EU passports apply in Sweden for identity checks, and Swedish passports apply throughout the European Union. This makes it more difficult to detect stolen documents, but still banks in Sweden must ensure that stolen documents are not accepted.

Other types of identity theft are becoming more common in Sweden. One common example is ordering a credit card to someone who has a letter that is unlocked and not at home during the day. Thieves steal mail with credit cards and then letters with codes that usually arrive a few days later. The use of stolen credit cards is difficult in Sweden, as identity documents or PIN codes are usually prosecuted. If the store does not demand it, it should take the loss of stolen credit cards. The method of observing someone using a credit card PIN code, stealing a card or darkening it, and then using the card, becomes more common.

By law, Sweden is an open society. The Public Access principle says that all information kept by public authorities should be available to anyone except in certain cases. Specifically, addresses, revenue, taxes, etc. Available to everyone. This makes fraud easier (addresses are limited to people who need to be hidden).

Until 2016 there is no special legal prohibition against the use of a person's identity, only on indirect damage caused. Posing as someone else for financial gain is a kind of fraud, which is described in the Criminal Code (Sweden: brottsbalken ). Posing as someone else to discredit someone by breaking into social media accounts and provoking, is a slander, but it is difficult to punish someone. A new law was introduced in late 2016 that partially prohibits the use of unauthorized identities.

United Kingdom

In the UK personal data is protected by the Data Protection Act 1998. This law covers all personal data that an organization may have, including names, birthday and anniversary dates, addresses, phone numbers, etc.

Under British law (which extends to Wales but not to Northern Ireland or Scotland), fraudulent scams under the 1968 Theft Act are increasingly in competition with identity theft situations. In R v Seward (2005) EWCA Crim 1941, the defendant acts as a "front man" in the use of stolen credit cards and other documents to obtain the goods. He obtained goods with a value of Ã, Â £ 10,000 for another person who could not have been identified. The Court of Appeals considers the penalty policy for fraud scams involving "identity theft" and concludes that imprisonment is required. Henriques J. says in paragraph 14: "Identity fraud is a very destructive and commonplace form of deception that demands, in our judgment, obstructs the sentence."

Statistics released by CIFAS - UK Fraud Prevention Services show that there are 89,000 identity theft victims in the UK 2010. This compares to 2009 where there were 85,000 victims. Men in their 30s and 40s are the most common UK casualties and identity fraud now accounts for nearly half of all recorded fraud.

United States

Increasing identity theft crimes leads to the preparation of Identity Theft and Assumption Prevention Assumptions. In 1998, the Federal Trade Commission appeared before the United States Senate. The FTC discusses crimes that exploit consumer credit to commit loan fraud, mortgage fraud, line-of-credit fraud, credit card fraud, commodity scams and services. The Identity Theft Prevention Act (2003) [ITADA] changed the US. Title Code 18, Ã,§ 1028 ("Fraud related to activity with respect to identification document, authentication feature, and information"). The law now makes ownership of an "identification tool" to "consciously transfer, possess, or use without authorized" federal crime, in addition to possession of unlawful identification documents. However, for federal jurisdiction to adjudicate, the offense must include a "good identification document": (a) purportedly issued by the United States, (b) used or intended to deceive the United States, (c) sent by mail, or (d) used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign trade. View 18 U.S.C.Ã, Ã,§Ã, 1028 (c). Penalties may be up to 5, 15, 20, or 30 years in federal prison, plus penalties, depending on the underlying crime per 18 U.S.C.Ã,§à ¢ 1028 (b). In addition, penalties for unlawful use of "means of identification" are reinforced in Ã, § 1028A ("Identity Theft Amounted"), allowing for consecutive punishment under certain violations of a crime mentioned as defined in Ã,§ 1028A (c) (1) through (11).

The law also provides the Federal Trade Commission with the authority to track the number of incidents and the value of dollar losses. Their figures relate primarily to consumer financial crimes and are not a wider range of all crime-based identification.

If the indictment is filed by a state or local law enforcement agency, different penalties apply depending on the country.

Six Federal agencies conduct a joint task force to improve the ability to detect identity theft. Their joint recommendation of "red flag" guidelines is a set of requirements for financial institutions and other entities that provide credit data to credit reporting services to develop a written plan to detect identity theft. The FTC has determined that most medical practices are considered creditor and are subject to requirements to develop plans to prevent and respond to identity theft of patients. This plan should be adopted by the Board of Directors of each organization and monitored by senior executives.

Identity theft complaints as a percentage of all fraudulent complaints declined from 2004-2006. The Federal Trade Commission reports that fraud complaints generally grow faster than ID theft complaints. Similar findings in two other FTC studies were conducted in 2003 and 2005. In 2003, 4.6 percent of the US population said they were ID theft victims. In 2005, that number dropped to 3.7 percent of the population. The 2003 Commission forecast is that identity theft contributed a loss of $ 52.6 billion in the prior year alone and affected more than 9.91 million Americans; the figure consisted of $ 47.6 billion lost by the business and $ 5 billion lost by consumers.

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2010, 7% of US households experienced identity theft - up from 5.5% in 2005 when the figures were first collected but widely flat since 2007. In 2012, about 16 , 6 million people, or 7% of all US citizens aged 16 years or over, are reported to be victims of one or more identity theft incidents.

At least two states, California and Wisconsin have created the Office of Privacy Protection to assist their citizens in avoiding and recovering from identity theft.

In 2009, Indiana created the Identity Theft Unit within their Prosecutor's Office to educate and assist consumers in avoiding and recovering from identity theft and assisting law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting the crime of identity theft.

In Massachusetts in 2009-2010, Governor Deval Patrick made a commitment to balance consumer protection with the needs of small business owners. The Consumer Affairs and Regulatory Affairs Office announces certain adjustments to Massachusetts's identity theft rules that retain protection and also allow flexibility in compliance. This updated regulation came into effect on March 1, 2010. The rules are clear that their approach to data security is an important risk-based approach for small businesses and may not handle much personal information about customers.

The IRS has created a Special Unit for the Protection of IRS Identities to assist taxpayers who are victims of federal identity theft in taxes. Generally, identity thieves will use a stolen SSN to file a fake tax return and try to get a fake refund at the beginning of the filing season. A taxpayer must complete Form 14039, Affidavit Identity Theft .

Notifications

Many states follow California leads and enforce mandatory data breach notification laws. As a result, companies reporting data breaches typically report it to all of their customers.

src: s.thestreet.com

Spread and impact

Surveys in the US from 2003 to 2006 showed a decrease in the number of victims and a decline in the total value of identity fraud from US $ 47.6 billion in 2003 to $ 15.6 billion in 2006. The average fraud per person decreased from $ 4,789 in 2003 to $ 1,882 in 2006. A Microsoft report indicates that the decline was due to statistical problems with the methodology, that such survey-based estimates were "very helpless" and exaggerated the actual losses based on the orders of magnitude.

The 2003 Survey of the Identity Theft Resource Center found that:

• Only 15% of victims know about the theft through proactive actions taken by the business
• The average time the victim spent to solve the problem was about 330 hours
• 73% of respondents indicated that the crime involved a thief who obtained a credit card

In a widely publicized account, Michelle Brown, a victim of identity fraud, testified before the US Senate Committee. Hear Identity Theft. Brown testified that: "more than a year and a half from January 1998 to July 1999, one person disguised me for more than $ 50,000 in goods and services Not only did he damage my credit, but he increased his crime to a level that I never true expecting: he was involved in drug trafficking, which resulted in my false arrest record, a warrant for my arrest, and finally, a prison record when he was booked on my behalf as a prisoner in the Federal Jail of Chicago. "

In Australia, identity theft is estimated to be worth between A $ 1 billion and A $ 4 billion per year in 2001.

In the United Kingdom, the Home Office reports that identity frauds weigh on the UK economy Ã, £ 1.2 billion per year (experts believe that actual numbers could be much higher) even though privacy groups object to the validity of these figures, arguing that they used by the government to encourage the introduction of national ID cards. Confusion about what constitutes identity theft has led to claims that statistics can be exaggerated. An extensive study reported from Microsoft Research in 2011 found that estimates of identity theft loss contained great dignitaries, writing that the survey "is highly compromised and biased that no confidence can be placed in their findings."

src: s.thestreet.com

See also

Type of fraud and theft

Organization

Legal

Identity thieves and important cases

src: today.duke.edu

References

src: www.touchtonalarms.com

External links

• Identity Theft - United States Federal Trade Commission
• Identity Theft Fraud Recovery Plan for identity theft victims.
• The Presidential Task Force on Identity Theft - a government task force set up by US President George W. Bush to fight identity theft.
• Identity theft in Curlie (based on DMOZ)
• Identity Theft - Carnegie Mellon University
• Identity Theft: Research Review, National Justice Institute 2007
• Identity Theft and Fraud - US Department of Justice
• NBC Dateline Investigation 'To Catch ID Thieves'
• "Transcript of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez and FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras Announces Release of Identity Theft of the Task Force President". US Department of Justice . 23 April 2007. Archived from the original on September 11, 2007 . Retrieved 2007-04-24 .
• Roxana, Hegeman (March 25, 2013). "Women Get Prison Time in 'Total Identity Theft' - ABC News". ABC News . Retrieved March 27, 2013 .
• Scam on the Run - Blurred Identity Thief Leads FBI Global Criminal Company

Source of the article : Wikipedia