Identity Crime - The Internet Can Minimize The Impact

In identity theft protection of Advisor (April 27, 2009 3:18 pm)

Identity theft – also termed ID theft, identity fraud and ID fraud – refers to a type of fraud where a criminal adopts someone else’s identity in order to profit illegally. It is one of the fastest growing forms of fraud in a lof of developed countries.

In the UK identity theft is increasing at the rate of 500% each year and, according to Which Magazine, 25% of the population have either suffered from identity theft or know someone who has.

In the USA, a report issued by the Better Business Bureau reported that, in 2004, over 9 million Americans became victims of identity theft with the total sum stolen being $52.6 billion.

With numbers like this, it’s no surprise that there is a certain level of concern about computer and internet security. After all, the internet is basically a mechanism for exchanging information and the possibility that some of the information transferred may be more than intended is never far from many internet user’s minds.

It’s easy to imagine evil masterminds around the globe using the internet to break into PCs in order to gain access to information with which to carry out their devilishly cunning scams. However, as shown in the report, the facts of the matter are a little more down to earth and the internet, far from making you more at risk to ID crime, can help to significantly minimise the damage if you do fall victim this form of illegal activity.

Based upon the Better Business Bureau’s research the most common methods by which criminals gain access to information used for identity theft fraud are as listed below:

• Obtained some other way. 7.4%
• Lost or stolen wallet, chequebook or credit card. 28.8%
• Computer viruses and/or hackers. 2.2%
• Information stolen from garbage. 2.6%
• Emails sent by criminals posing as legitimate business. 1.7%
• Accessed by friend, acquaintance or relative. 11.4%
• Computer spyware. 5.2%
• Information accessed by corrupt employee. 8.7%
• Accessed as part of a transaction. 12.9%*
• Stolen paper mail or fraudulent change of address. 8.0%
• Don\’t know, refused, no answer. 11.1%

* 12.9% due to transactions – 10.4% offline transactions, 2.5% online transactions.

In total, when the instances where information was accessed during transactions are segmented into online and offline transactions, only 11.6% of the information used to carry out ID theft fraud was obtained from computers.

Of this more than 50% was obtained by using reduced by installing the appropriate protection software and ensuring that this is kept current.

Not only did the survey reveal that the internet was not a major source of illegally obtained personal data that those fraud victims who monitored their financial records online, ATM machines or other digital methods suffered monetary losses which were, on average, 8 times lower relative to those of victims who used conventional 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 sensible precations when using the worldwide web or take care to protect the personal information which you may have stored on your computer. However, as long as you install suitable virus, firewall and spyware protection, and keep this continually updated, the internetscams.

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