Identity theft is a term used that is to refer to fraud that involves someone pretending to be someone else in order to steal money or get other benefits. The term dates to 1964 and is actually a misnomer, since it is not inherently possible to steal an identity, only to use it. The person whose identity is used can suffer various consequences when he or she is held responsible for the perpetrator's actions. In many countries specific laws make it a crime to use another person's identity for personal gain.
Identity theft is somewhat different from identity fraud. However, the terms are often used interchangeably. Identity fraud is the result of identity theft. Someone can steal or appropriate someone's identifying information without actually committing identity fraud. The best example of this is when a data breach occurs. There has been very little evidence to link ID fraud to data breaches. A Government Accountability Office study determined that "most breaches have not resulted in detected incidents of identity theft". However the title of that report is "Data Breaches Are Frequent, but Evidence of Resulting Identity Theft Is Limited; However, the Full Extent Is Unknown ". A later study by Carnegie Mellon University concluded that "the probability of becoming a victim to identity theft as a result of a data breach is ...around only 2%". More recently, one of the largest data breaches ever, accounting for over four million records, resulted in only about 1800 instances of identity theft, according to the company whose systems were breached. However, synthetic ID theft is not always detectable by the consumers whose information was used, according to an FTC report.
Types
According to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center and other sources, Identity theft can be sub-divided into five categories:
- business/commercial identity theft (using another's business name to obtain credit)
- criminal identity theft (posing as another when apprehended for a crime)
- financial identity theft (using another's identity to obtain goods and services)
- identity cloning (using another's information to assume his or her identity in daily life)
- medical identity theft (her's information to obtain medical care or drugs)
Identity theft may be used to facilitate crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism, and espionage. Identity theft may also be a means of bluemail. There are also cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, including online credit card processing and medical insurance.
Some individuals may impersonate others for non-financial reasons - for instance, to receive praise or attention for the victim's achievements. This is sometimes referred to as identity theft in the media.
others for financial reaso
Elaboration
Identity cloning and concealment
In this situation, a criminal acquires personal identifiers, and then impersonates someone for the purpose of concealment from authorities. This may be done by a person who wants to avoid arrest for crimes, by a person who is working illegally in a foreign country, or by a person who is hiding from creditors or other individuals. Unlike credit-dependent financial crimes, concealment can continue for an indeterminate amount of time without ever being detected. Additionally, the criminal might attempt to obtained fraudulent documents or IDs consistent with the cloned identity to make the impersonation even more convincing and concealed.
Criminal identity theft
When a criminal identifies himself to police as another individual it is sometimes referred to as "Criminal Identity Theft." In some cases the criminal will obtain a 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, they present the ID to authorities, who place charges under the identity theft victim's name and release the criminal. When the criminal fails to appear for his court hearing, a warrant would be issued under the assumed name. The victim might learn of the incident if the state suspends their own drivers 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.
It can be difficult for a criminal identity theft victim to clear their record. The steps required to clear the victim's incorrect criminal record depend on what jurisdiction the crime occurred in and whether the true identity of the criminal can be determined. The victim might need to locate the original arresting officers, or be fingerprinted to prove their own identity, and may need to go to a court hearing to be cleared of the charges. Obtaining an expungement of court records may also be required. Authorities might permanently maintain the victim's name as an alias for the criminal's true identity in their criminal records databases. One problem that victims of criminal identity theft may encounter is that various data aggregators might still have the incorrect criminal records in their databases even after court and police records are corrected. Thus it is possible that a future background check will return the incorrect criminal records.
Synthetic identity theft
A variation of identity theft which has recently become more common is synthetic identity theft , in which identities are completely or partially fabricated. The most common technique is combining a real social security number with a name and birthdate other than the ones associated with the number. Synthetic identity theft is more difficult to track, as it doesn't show on either person's credit report directly, but may appear as an entirely new file in the credit bureau or as a subfile on one of the victim's credit reports. Synthetic identity theft primarily harms the creditors that unwittingly grant the fraudsters credit. Consumers can be affected if their names become confused with the synthetic identities, or if negative information in their subfiles impacts their credit.
Medical identity theft
Medical identity theft occurs when someone uses a person's name and sometimes other parts of their identity—such as insurance information—without the person's knowledge or consent to obtain medical services or goods, or uses the person’s identity information to make false claims for 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. :O
Techniques for obtaining personal information
See also: Wireless identity theftIn most cases, a criminal needs to obtain personally identifiable information or documents about an individual in order to impersonate them. They may do this by:
- Stealing mail or rummaging through rubbish containing personal information (dumpster diving)
- Retrieving information from redundant equipment, like computer servers that have been disposed of carelessly, e.g. at public dump sites, given away without proper sanitizing etc.
- Researching about the victim in government registers, internet search engines, or public records search services.
- Stealing payment or identification cards, either by pickpocketing or surreptitiously by skimming through a compromised card reader
- Remotely reading information from an RFID chip on a smart card, RFID-enabled credit card, or passport
- Eavesdropping on public transactions to obtain personal data (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 a Social Security number or credit card number.
- 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 (phishing)
- Obtaining castings of fingers for falsifying fingerprint identification.
- Browsing social network (MySpace, Facebook, Bebo etc) sites, online for personal details that have been posted by users
- Changing your address thereby diverting billing statements to another location to either get current legitimate account info or to delay discovery of fraudulent accounts.
- Using false pretenses to trick a business (usually through a customer service representative) into disclosing customer information (pretexting)
- Use of 'contactless' credit card skimming technology to acquire data recorded on special RFID enabled cards
- Stealing checks to acquire banking information, including account numbers and bank routing numbers
Individual identity protection
The acquisition of personal identifiers is made possible through serious breaches of privacy. For consumers, this is usually due to personal naiveté about who they provide their information to. In some cases the criminal obtains documents or personal identifiers through physical theft (e.g. vehicle break-ins and home invasions). Gu
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