ID Crime – The Web 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 increasing at the rate of 500% each year and, according to Which Magazine, 25% of the populace have either suffered from identity theft or know someone who has.
In America, a briefing issued by the Better Business Bureau reported 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 surprise that there is a certain degree of concern on the topic of computer and internet security. After all, the internet is primarily a mechanism for exchanging data and the possibility that some of the information exchanged may be more than intended is never far from many internet user’s minds.
It’s easy to imagine criminal geniuses around the globe using the internet to hack into computers in order to gain access to personal facts with which to advance their devilishly evil plots. 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 prone to ID crime, can help to significantly reduce your losses if you do fall victim this form of illegal activity.
According to the Better Business Bureau’s report the most common methods by which criminals gain access to data used for identity theft fraud are as noted below:
- Obtained some other way. 7.4%
- Don\’t know, refused, no answer. 11.1%
- Accessed as part of a transaction. 12.9%*
- Lost or stolen wallet, chequebook or credit card. 28.8%
- Computer viruses and/or hackers. 2.2%
- Stolen paper mail or fraudulent change of address. 8.0%
- Emails sent by criminals posing as legitimate business. 1.7%
- Computer spyware. 5.2%
- Information stolen from garbage. 2.6%
- Information accessed by corrupt employee. 8.7%
- 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 ID theft fraud was obtained from computers.
Of this more than 50% was obtained by using reduced by installing suitable protection software and making sure that this is kept up to date.
Not only did the survey reveal that the internet was not a major source of fraudulently obtained personal information, but it was also credit records using the internet, ATM machines or other real time methods suffered financial losses which were, on average, eight times lower than those of victims who used conventional paper statements to review their transactions. This very significant reduction was put down to the quick discovery of the crime due to “real time” monitoring.
Of course, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t exercise great care when using the internet or take care to protect the personal data which you might have stored on your computer. However, as long as you install suitable virus, firewall and spyware programs, and keep this continually updated, the will be more of a help than a hindrance when it comes to escaping identity fraud.
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