Identity theft (ID theft or identity fraud) is the deliberate appropriation of an individual’s personal information to impersonate that person in a legal sense. Stealing someone’s identity enables the thief to make a frightening number of financial and personal transactions in someone else’s name, leaving the victim responsible for what might turn out to be a mind-boggling turmoil in his or her life. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) keeps records on identity theft, and, not surprisingly, the number of incidents reported increase each year. The recent identity theft statistics reveal that ID theft affects as many as ten million Americans each year! According to FTC’s identity theft statistics, the losses to businesses and financial institutions total nearly 53 billion dollars annually.

These identity theft statistics further reveal that the most common types of ID thefts are credit card frauds, communications services fraud (such as opening a cell phone or a utility services account using someone else’s information), bank fraud and loan fraud. For years, the primary cause of identity theft has been good old-fashioned or low-tech analog crime. Impersonators rummaging though mailboxes, snatching purses or searching the garbage for discarded bank statements or credit card receipts. Rapid advances in technology have seen a plague of sophisticated phishing attacks. Identity theft statistics expose phishing as the most dangerous of all ID thefts that uses both social engineering and technical subterfuge.

Phishing can have serious financial consequences. In a phishing attack, the victim is sent an email that “appears” to be from a bank or other financial institution. The victim is then told to click a link and verify his/her account information or supply personal identity data. The link appears to be a legitimate site, but is in fact a scam. The moment he/she enters sensitive data, the identity thief gains access to account information and can empty the bank account. Phishers can also take out credit cards in the victim’s name, steal ISP account information and do other financial damage. In its latest report on identity theft statistics, the research group Gartner says that close to 60 million Americans reported receiving a phishing email, and 1.7 million people have been victims of identity theft, which cost banks and credit card companies $1.2 billion in losses.

You must take steps to protect your account information, social security numbers, passwords, etc. Now. Always memorize and shred important documents that you are discarding. Don’t simply throw these types of documents away!

Keith Londrie II is a well known author. For more information on Identity Theft, please visit Identity Theft for a wealth of information. You may also want to visit keith’s own web site at http://keithlondrie.com/

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As the world becomes more advanced each day, it also seems to grow less and less secure. The creation of new virtual venues has also paved the way to the emergence of places where people can be victims of criminal activity such as fraud and identity theft. In the real world, people of high stature get the service of bodyguards and security forces. Would such protective measures also be beneficial for the world of data?
Most people think that data security is something that only large business entities would have to be concerned about. However, the Internet is an open channel can be accessed by anyone. And now that people are doing more personal matters through the internet, such banking shopping, sending confidential male and personal letters, it is probably just right for people to take more steps to keep their privacy and security.
The answer to this situation is file encryption, which is basically a more sophisticated and powerful manifestation of the age-old art of ciphering that has been used by humans throughout history. Do you actually need to take advantage of such programs that make your files secure through complicated encryption? Perhaps knowing more about file encryption would […]

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