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Identity Crime – The Internet Can Minimize The Impact
Identity theft – also called ID theft, identity fraud and ID fraud – refers to a type of fraud where a criminal steals someone else’s identity in order to profit illegally. It is one of the quickest growing forms of fraud in a lof of developed countries.
In the UK identity theft is growing at the rate of 500% every year and, according to Which Magazine, 25% of the population have either suffered from identity theft or know someone who has.
In America, a briefing issued by the Better Business Bureau revealed that, in 2004, over 9 million Americans became victims of identity type crime with the total sum defrauded being $52.6 billion.
With figures like this, it’s no wonder that there is a certain level of concern about computer and internet security. After all, the internet is primarily a mechanism for transferring data and the possibility that some of the information exchanged may be more than desired is never far from many internet user’s minds.
It’s easy to imagine evil geniuses around the globe using the internet to break into computers in order to gain access to data with which to carry out their fiendishly cunning schemes. However, as shown in the report, the facts of the matter are a little more simple and the internet, far from making you more prone to identity theft, can help to significantly reduce your losses if you do fall victim this type of crime.
According to the Better Business Bureau’s research the most common methods by which criminals gain access to data used for identity theft fraud are as listed below:
- Don\’t know, refused, no answer. 11.1%
- Information stolen from garbage. 2.6%
- Computer spyware. 5.2%
- Obtained some other way. 7.4%
- Computer viruses and/or hackers. 2.2%
- Information accessed by corrupt employee. 8.7%
- Stolen paper mail or fraudulent change of address. 8.0%
- Emails sent by criminals posing as legitimate business. 1.7%
- Accessed as part of a transaction. 12.9%*
- Lost or stolen wallet, chequebook or credit card. 28.8%
- Accessed by friend, acquaintance or relative. 11.4%
* 12.9% due to transactions – 10.4% offline transactions, 2.5% online transactions.
In total, when the instances where data was accessed during transactions are subdivided into online and offline transactions, only 11.6% of the information used to carry out identity theft fraud was obtained from computers.
Of this more than half was obtained by greatly reduced by installing suitable protection software and ensuring that this is kept current.
Not only did the survey reveal that the internet was not a major source of fraudulently obtained personal data that those fraud victims who reviewed their credit records using the internet, ATM machines or other digital methods suffered financial losses which were, on average, 8 times lower than those of victims who used traditional paper statements to review their records. This very significant reduction was put down to the rapid discovery of the crime due to “real time” monitoring.
Of course, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t exercise caution when using the worldwide web or take care to protect the personal data which you may have stored on your computer. However, as long as you install suitable virus, firewall and spyware protection, and keep this constantly updated, the internetavoiding identity crime.
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