Identity theft is a type of fraud in which a person’s identity is hacked and the hacker acts as someone else by presuming that person’s identity. They do such to gain credit and other profits and to access resources in that person’s identity. The prey of identity theft suffers undesirable penalties if he is held responsible for the actions of executor. Businesses and individuals tricked or deceived of identity theft can also suffer unpleasant consequences and fatalities. We talked more about what is identity theft in this post so check that for more basic information.
Identity theft is a real risk in all senses. Hackers are using mean software to hack one’s identity. Gunter Ollmann, a security specialist, recently said that credit card theft is not very tough as there are apps for that. This assertion sums up the easiness of entrancing all kinds of data online by the hackers. Nowadays the programs are so easy to operate that even an inexpert hacker can control them. This software can steal important documents, credit card information, and even necessary documents for home security. If the purpose of the hacker is to get this data, it would denote an identity theft or a likely terrorist attack.
Identity theft can be divided into five categories. They are Business identity theft, criminal identity theft, financial identity theft, identity cloning and medical identity theft.
The most occurred form is criminal identity theft. If criminal falsely shows himself to law as an innocent individual while arresting, it is called Criminal Identity Theft. Victims are fallen into such occurrences by chance, for instance by getting court summons, or during background checks executed for employment purposes.
Identity theft can be used to make easy or fund other criminal activities including terrorism, illegal immigration, and espionage. There are instances of identity cloning for attacking payment systems, counting credit card processing online and medical insurance. Sometimes identity thieves impersonate others for reasons without financial matters. For example, they may want to grab attention or honor for any achievements of the victim.
A unique kind of identity theft named synthetic identity theft has turned out to be more widespread recently. In this process, identities are totally or partly fabricated. In this method the most ordinary technique combines a genuine communal security number with the name of a person and date of birth except the ones related with the number. This identity theft is harder to trail as it is never shown on any of the person’s credit report openly. It only may emerge at the credit bureau as a completely fresh file or as a subordinate file on the credit reports of either of the victim. Synthetic identity theft chiefly troubles the creditors who unsuspectingly accept the credit of the fraud.
Many people are informed wrongly about identity theft. It is shown by the statistics that merely 28% of the cases with identity theft involve economic or credit fraud. The thieves use your personal data in more resourceful ways than you can think of. Telephone and utilities fraud, employment fraud, bank fraud, loan fraud, and insurance fraud are the criteria of identity theft that are actually active in the field.
