Imagine Mrs. Smith is sitting down at her desk, logging into her bank account only to realize that someone has stolen all her savings. She begins to look into her transactions showing purchases made at stores she has never visited. This is one type of identity theft. Identity theft is someone who deliberately steals another person’s identity in order to gain financial advantage, obtain a line of credit or any other benefits. When a criminal hacks into a person’s finances, or personal information, this allows the criminal to become the victim. Permitting them to make unauthorized purchases or banking transactions. Identity thieves will also pass along the victim’s information to other criminals in other countries. Often with identity theft, it will take a tremendous amount of time to repair the damage that has been done. This paper will discuss the history of identity theft how identity theft affects a person and the legal portion of identity theft.
Since the arrival of the internet, the methods in which attackers obtain an individual's identity have become harder to identify from what is fake to what is legitimate. Some emails or phone calls that contact people are becoming progressively more difficult to identify as real or fake. Some of the major ones are when the cell phone carrier calls and states that the account information has changed and they would like you to verify the account to ensure it is a fraud. This seems to be the new scam today is criminals pretending to be these major companies and asking for account information. According to Lifelock Company, tax, medical, and synthetic identity theft are just a few that are ways people are becoming a victim. Today criminals are calling or texting to pretend to be the IRS and asking for information, they even go to using threats that the person will be in legal trouble with the IRS if they do not respond to this within a certain time frame. Medical identity theft takes place when a criminal uses your health insurance to be given medical care resulting in unpaid medical bills in your name. The other impact of this is that when a person pretends to be you and sees a doctor your record could be updated with the other individual’s health information potentially hurting your health. A final example is synthetic identity theft is when criminals use fabricated data to create a fake identity and open credit card accounts, they will use your social security number but put a false address which will not show on your credit report (Porter, 2020). Synthetic identity theft is the hardest to catch due to not seeing this information on your credit report leaving the person unaware of the accounts being taken out in their name for years. Synthetic identity theft primarily harms the creditors who unsuspectingly grant the fraudsters credit.
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Children's identity theft is a tempting target for theft because it can go undetected for years (Child Identity Theft | TransUnion, 2020). An impostor can be a family member, a friend, or even a stranger who targets children. When your child is born you want to protect them from the world physically and emotionally as a parent every day. The one thing that parents do not think of is their own Child's social security number being used by someone else. Today children that are in foster care are more likely to have their identity stolen due to the nature of being moved from one foster parent to another and having personnel information known to the foster parents. Just like companies, school databases are subjected to breaches as well as increasing the likely hood of a criminal stealing a child’s social security number and using it to open accounts and loans in their name even obtaining a driver’s license. When a child’s identity is ruined through criminals acting as them and taking out credit card loans or using it for tax fraud it affects them either weeks, months, or even years down the road. If the parent is not actively looking at the child’s credit report it will increase the chance a criminal will have used social security to ruin the child’s future. The Child will have not known this until they have gone for a job interview, asked for a loan, or even tried to obtain a cell phone carrier.
How information is obtained. Identity theft is not something that was developed overnight, it has been an ongoing issue since before the internet was developed. From 1960 to 1980 identity theft was accomplished through someone calling claiming the person won the lottery or gifts, the victim then would give the scammer their personal bank information or social security number (Hur, 2020). Hence, allowing the criminal an opportunity to steal the other person’s identity and to clean out their bank account. A term called “ghosting” has been used when an individual would assume another person’s identity through either death or murder and wanted to start over with a new life, criminals would use this when trying to hide from the law or to escape from their own specific life in trying to start over. Another way was that people would go through someone’s garbage looking for bank statements and credit card offers or other information used to establish identity. Emails can be a doorway into your computer if you are not screening them properly and opening them up without verifying first if the email being sent from the person is legitimate. These emails can look exactly like the genuine thing from either a bank or IRS. When a person gives their information to these fake emails it’s called phishing and within minutes the criminal has the information needed. Criminals have other methods for obtaining information using malware, keystroke logging and other forms of spyware. Over time the means and process that people would go through to find ways of gaining access to a victim’s information evolved and the criminals became cleverer. Either through the use of computers, social media, calling, or through the post office, criminals are determined to find ways to get what they want in the long run.
Victims do not realize they are until it affects their lives and they are being contacted by various financial institutions. There are indicators to show that you have been a victim of identity theft. Some of the common ones are seeing charges in your accounts or withdrawals that you did not do and receiving credit cards that you did not apply for. One major one is when the person notices their credit score drops significantly giving them a good indication something is wrong. When someone is actively monitoring all accounts in their personal life they can effectively stop thieves from taking their information and money from them.
There are a variety of ways to protect yourself and your family from identity theft. Some significant ways to be proactive in protecting information is to, keep your personal devices updated with the current anti-virus, spyware, and phishing software (How to protect yourself from Identity Theft, 2010). Today some people open an alternate email address and use it as their junk mail for unwanted solicitation from businesses, offers, credit cards, and spam. Look at your personnel information on all your social media accounts and take off anything that could be used as a potential insight to gaining access to accounts, such as birthdates, mothers’ middle name, place of birth, address, sports team, and telephone number. Try not to use passwords to accounts that have your name in them or a specific date, make them unique and over eight characters. Always review your personal information on the credit report and challenge anything that looks inaccurate with the three credit bureaus. Having a cross-cut shredder at home is another great way to keep your documents safe from people going through your garbage. Ensure you shred all statements, credit card offers, and cash offer loans from the mail. Even using the ATM or gas station pump, criminals have found a way to scan your credit card to pull your information and have access to your money within just yards away from you. In just a few minutes before the victim can even realize that their money is gone, it will be too late and the victim will have to dispute it with the bank or credit company. Also keeping personal documents in a safe to prevent a burglar from obtaining information about you is another preventative measure. With identity theft becoming a greater threat to families there have also been more tools for people to use in combating someone from stealing information. The Federal Trade Commission has a tremendous amount of information for people about how to take identity theft in steps when or if it happens to you.
Today over millions of people are victims of this crime. It affects children, adults, and even seniors. It knows no age, gender or race. According to Harrell, Ph.D., and Langton, Ph.D., (2013) credit cards account for 40% and financial transactions account for 37% of identity fraud. This is a costly crime that is in the billions for direct and indirect losses. Many people fail to realize they have become a statistic until it is too late, the damage has been done depending on how long the crime has been committed. A person who tries to qualify for a mortgage will be denied because of poor credit, or the debt-to-income ratio is high due to identity theft. The thief can even go after one’s retirement account causing them to have no investments for the future.
Depending on the length of time for the victim to dispute the incident and have the service provider investigate it, the victim may not have the money to pay simple bills in the meantime due to the retirement account being drained. Draining a child’s future education fund that a parent has worked hard to save up for years is another tremendous loss, especially if the child is actively going to college and depends on the money saved from the parents to continue their education. Sure, this has a huge financial impact on an individual but what about the person’s mental well-being? Anger is the first feeling that victims may experience in such instances. But after recovering from the initial shock, other challenging and long-term mental stress may show up (Tank, 2019). Families have been destroyed when a criminal takes everything from them that they both have worked so hard for. Regret and blame sometimes can play a factor in it along with suicide, the victims start to believe that they caused this or the other person's spouse caused this. Having your identity stolen in today’s workforce and not knowing will have a significant impact on one’s career. Companies see it as if you’re irresponsible about your finances then why should they hire you, when that is not the case? This type of crime not only has an effect on the victim but the victim’s family, especially if there is no action taken to stop or correct the crime.
As identity theft continues to be a national issue to businesses and people what happens to the individual who gets arrested for committing a crime? Catching a thief is not as simple as catching a burglar or a person who committed armed robbery. These thieves are sometimes are not even in the country and when it happens it is difficult for the thief to be identified in order to be arrested. Yet when it comes to actually catch a thief the United States is lenient when it comes to committing this crime depending on what the severity of it is. As per U.S. Code, a person who knowingly transfers, possesses or uses another person’s identity is sentenced to two years, but if it is found to be a terrorism offense the imprisonment is five years (18 U.S. Code § 1028A - Aggravated identity theft, 2020). The use of the dark web has made it a profitable marketplace for thieves to find and obtain people's information and use that information within minutes around the world.
The importance to make sure that any business and personnel accounts are protected is without a doubt a tremendous task but is one that needs to be improved to ensure information is not used without permission. A person should read their credit, and bank statements carefully and frequently. Make sure to shred any personal or confidential information. In 2016 over 134,000 U.S. Sailors, personal data were compromised due to a laptop by a Navy Contractor being breached (Blake and Martinez, 2016). This data breach contained Sailor’s names, addresses, and social security numbers. The scope of this data breach is small compared to the immense cyberattack on the federal government back in 2015.
With all these data breaches and people having their identity taken continues to teach us all on fresh ways of protecting information. No system will ever be perfect, but as these attacks happen new ideas are created and lessons are learned to improve the reliability of the infrastructure. This project is worth taking the time and ensuring that we understand how and why attacks happen to an individual or a company. People and businesses are not just subject to attack just by random chance, these attackers have screened or looked into something and decided it is worth going after this person or company. Think of it as a burglar, most people do not think when you are driving down the street that the guy in the car next to you sees that expensive watch you are wearing and follows you or gets your license plate. A burglar and an identity thief are the same people, they have something you want and will do anything to make sure they can take it. When burglaries started to become an issue, people decided to install security systems in the house to prevent break-ins. Information Security is the same thing when it comes to personal information for business and home computers. Trust, trust is what people want when they purchase something online from a company hoping the information provided is secure and nothing will happen with it.
According to the consumer affairs website for the 2020 identity theft statistics, there has been an increase in identity thefts affecting seniors, Children, and Military members. Looking through this data it shows the following has increased, form jacking 117 percent, new account fraud 13 percent, and account take over 79 percent (Douglas, 2020). This data depicts the elderly who are on a fixed income and who are more trusting, to children that do not even know how to look up their social security number potentially damaging them early on. The military members are affected and the family when the service member is gone for lengthy periods. The one thing that is set in stone is that the attacks are not getting any less nor are they improving. The ethics behind attacks and people having their names ruined by offenders can be devastating. Let say you own a business or running for an important position within the community. If your name is being used in a negative term by someone who stole it, then the problem becomes more than just money. “The illegal use of someone else’s personal information (such as Social Security Number), to obtain money or credit” ('Definition of IDENTITY THEFT', 2020).
References
- Blake, P., & Martinez, L. (2016). Navy Says Personal Data of Over 134,000 Sailors Was Hacked. Retrieved 14 March 2020, from https://abcnews.go.com/US/navy-personal-data-134000-sailorshacked/story?id=%2043760770
- Consumerreports.org. 2010. How To Protect Yourself From Identity Theft. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 April 2020].
- Definition of IDENTITY THEFT. (2020). Retrieved 23 March 2020, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/identity%20theft
- Douglas, R. (2020, January 16). Trends and statistics about identity theft. Retrieved March 15, 2020, from https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/identity-theft-statistics.html
- Harrell, Ph.D, E., & Langton, Ph.D., L. (2013). Victims of Identity Theft, 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2020, from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vit12.pdf
- Hur, J., 2020. History Of Identity Theft Protection. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 April 2020].
- LII / Legal Information Institute. 2020. 18 U.S. Code § 1028A - Aggravated Identity Theft. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 April 2020].
- Porter, K., 2020. 10 Types Of Identity Theft You Should Know About. [online] Lifelock.com. Available at: [Accessed 14 April 2020].
- Tank, c. (2019). What Are The Negative and Lasting Effects Of Identity Theft? - cFIRST Corp. Retrieved 26 February 2020, from https://www.cfirstcorp.com/negative-and-lasting-effects-of-identity-theft/
- TransUnion. 2020. Child Identity Theft | Transunion. [online] Available at: [Accessed 14 April 2020].
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