Identity theft is the deliberate assumption of another person's identity, usually to gain access to their credit or frame them for some crime. Less commonly, it is to enable illegal immigration, terrorism, espionage or changing identity permanently. It may also be a means of blackmail, especially if medical privacy or political privacy has been breached, and revealing the activities undertaken by the thief under the name of the victim would have serious consequences like loss of job or marriage.
Identity theft is usually the result of serious breaches of privacy. Except for the simplest credit cases, it is usually not possible without breakdowns in:
- customer privacy, in which case the consequences may be limited to fraud on one corporation, typically the one that leaked the data in the first place, e.g. account numbers.
- consumer privacy, more serious, where credit card numbers or other generally-useful identity is stolen and used much more widely.
- medical privacy enabling one to alter biometrics stored on the victim, and thus very effectively impersonate them even through secure points.
- client confidentiality and political privacy, making it easy to effectively impersonate someone, by using confidential information that an ordinary impersonator would not have access to.
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2 Precautions against it 3 External link |
It is said that "identity theft is the fastest growing offence in North America". It is difficult to quantify the extent of identity theft. One reason for this is that identity theft is often a precursor to other crimes, such as fraud and theft. Records of these crimes may be filed under the "strongest" crime, leaving the identity theft to get lost in the mix.
One reason for the prevalence of identity theft is that credit card companies in the United States have an interest in not publicizing cases of identity theft and have a disincentive for making identity and credit information secure. It is estimated that credit card companies in the United States lose up to $5 billion dollars (US) a year and they accept that as a "cost of doing business", since making credit information secure would make using credit somewhat less convenient and might discourage people from using it.
To guard against identity theft:
Consequences of identity theft
Precautions against it
External link