Learning How to Protect Against Identity Theft Before You Become a Victim.

What is identity theft anyway?

The stealing or obtaining of a persons financial information, whether it be the intention of using that data to commit fraud and or create a phony persona, without that persons knowledge. Fraudulent use of such knowledge, makes it a crime of obtaining the personal or financial information, assuming that persons name. Stealing such information can be committed many different ways, Identity thieves go "dumpster diving", which is when they sift through trash bins, looking for bank account numbers, credit card statements, to steal lists of customer information, and accessing corporate databases.

Identity theft can ruin a persons credit rating. You should view your credit report often to check the accuracy of your personal records, and promptly deal with any discrepancies. Using someone's drivers license number is also considered identity theft. A stolen passport, date of birth, and a ssn can be used to open a fraudulent bank account. Stolen credit card use, or other accounts. Criminal identity theft is the most common non financial type, used to steal another's personal information, and is just as easy to get arrested for. Financial losses and damaged credit are expensive and time consuming to correct. It was in the late 1990's due to the computerization of records that make it easier to use another's personal information anonymously over the internet.

Identity theft, now a catch-all term, meaning crimes involving illegal usage of another's individual's identity, has strong roots and the most common form of identity theft is credit card fraud. The final goal is the practice of stealing money and pretending to be a different person, even offering the last 4 digits or numbers of their ssn as valid proof.

Monitoring vs. Protection Services

protecting id theft goes beyond just reporting identity theft. There are also different types of identity theft services. Some refer to themselves as a "monitoring service". Monitoring companies watch a persons credit report. When a line of credit is opened, the "monitoring company" contacts the individual who's credit was accessed, and reports to them what action took place. The Credit Monitoring company did exactly what it said it would do, it "monitored" or watched your credit get unauthorized access. Something like having a security camera pointing at a bank safe, and being in another state watching thieves break into the bank, watching them break into the vault, steal the money, and watch them escape. The camera did exactly what its supposed to do, "monitor" the situation.

Other services promote "prevention". The word "prevent" implies to not allow, to stop, to take action ahead of time. Consider the same bank vault, and same camera, only now there is a guard in front of the vault, with a gun. As a security backup, we've placed a guard inside the vault, just in case the first guard went on a doughnut break. What could be better than that? How about a million dollar service guarantee that says any damage of loss due to the thief tricking the second guard, you will be covered.

This is something like what Lifelock does, protect ID theft, with a guarantee. Without protection from identity theft, your next step, is to repair your credit report. Online ID theft is similar to going to a restaurant, finishing the meal, handing someone you don't know or ever saw before, your credit card. They go back behind a wall, you think they're authorizing your credit card, they may be, but they may also be copying down your card number for future use, maybe 6 months from now, so you wont be able to trace back who might have stolen your credit card number. Its difficult to know all the ways to protect it from getting started. Lifelock is the Best way to protect it, don't become an identity theft victim.

To Identify, or Not to Identify

The strongest protection against ID theft is NOT to identify at all - thereby ensuring that information cannot be reused to impersonate an individual elsewhere. Identity theft is often a question of too little privacy or too much identification. How can so much information get out if you personally keep it private? A failure to shred confidential information before throwing it into dumpster's. The brokerage of personal information to others businesses without ensuring that the purchaser maintains adequate security controls. The theft of laptop computers being carried offsite containing vast amounts of personal information. If corporate or government organizations do not protect consumer privacy, client confidentiality and political privacy, the acquisition of personal identifiers to commit unlawful acts will continue to be a prime target for criminals.

A crime is considered identity theft when the deceit or intent to gain advantage for himself or another person, the intent to obtain any property or an interest in any property, the intent to cause disadvantage to the person whom he personates or another person, or is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment.

Methods Information is Obtained

Stealing mail or rummaging through rubbish (dumpster diving).
Retrieving information from redundant equipment which has been disposed of carelessly, e.g. at public dump sites, given away without proper sanitizing etc.
Stealing payment or identification cards or the information on them (pick pocketing, "drive-by" scanning of RF-enabled cards/tags).
Eavesdropping on public transactions to obtain personal data (shoulder surfing). Stealing personal information in computer databases (Trojan horses, hacking) 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 organization in an electronic communication (phishing).
Obtaining castings of fingers for falsifying fingerprint identification. browsing social network sites, online for personal details that have been posted by users Simply researching about the victim in government registers, at the internet, Google, and so on.

Only 15% of victims find out about the theft through proactive action taken by a business The average time spent by victims resolving the problem is about 40 hours 73% of respondents indicated the crime involved the thief acquiring a credit card The emotional impact is similar to that of victims of violent crimes

ID Theft can be sub-divided into four categories:

Financial Identity Theft - using another's identity to obtain goods and services.
Criminal Identity Theft - posing as another when apprehended for a crime.
Identity Cloning - using another's information to assume his or her identity.
Business / Commercial ID Theft - using another's business name to obtain credit.
Related crimes include illegal immigration, terrorism and espionage.

Impersonating someone related. This criminal pretends to be a victim by presenting an accurate name, address, birth date, information of the like that a lender requires. Anything that might be a means of establishing identity. Even if this information is checked against the data at a national credit-rating service, the lender will encounter no concern, as all of the victims information matches the records. The lender has no easy way to discover that the person is pretending to be the victim. There are even times that government issues ID can be falsified.

The Federal Trade Commission

The increase in crimes of identity theft lead to the drafting of the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. In 1998, The Federal Trade Commission appeared before the United States Senate. The FTC discussed crimes which exploit consumer credit to commit loan fraud, mortgage fraud, lines-of-credit fraud, credit card fraud, commodities and services frauds. The Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act (2003)[ITADA] amended the U.S. Code, s. 1028: "Fraud related to activity in connection with identification documents, authentication features, and information". The Code now makes possession of any "means of identification" to "knowingly transfer, possess, or use without lawful authority" a federal crime, alongside unlawful possession of identification documents.

The Act also provides the Federal Trade Commission with authority to track the number of incidents and the dollar value of losses. There figures relate mainly to consumer financial crimes and not the broader range of all identification-based crimes.''' Punishments for the unlawful use of a "means of identification" were strengthened in s.1028a, allowing for a consecutive sentence under specific conditions of a felony violation defined in s. 1028c.