Combating Identity Theft

1. INTRODUCTION:

1.1 What is identity theft?

Identity Theft, in a very simple term, is stealing a person's private identifying information, usually for financial gain. It is prevalent throughout the world and there are several ways to steal one’s identity. Stealing one’s identity doesn’t require much information. By getting the name, date of birth and address of a person, one can easily steal the person’s identity.

1.2 What does this paper focuses on?

The paper focuses on identifying:

 The common types of identity theft.

 The issues associated with identity theft.

 The most commonly affected sectors

 Technologies and techniques utilized/implemented by organizations to combat it.

 Data mining techniques utilized to implement algorithm mitigating identity theft.

2. TYPES OF IDENTITY THEFT:

Usually an identity thief goes after a specific set of sources that could help him steal the person’s identity easily. The commonly preferred sources are displayed in the following diagram.

A person’s identity can be stolen physically or electronically. There are several ways in which one can steal a person’s identity. Here are the most common ways to steal one’s identity:

 Stolen Wallet – Taking wallet that a person missed accidentally or pickpocket.

 Pilfered Mail – Stealing information from one’s mail.

 Computer Virus – Infecting the computer to obtain passwords and other information of one’s identity from the computer.

 Phishing – An attack through electronic communication to steal identity information by camouflaging as a trustworthy entity.

 Dumpster Diving – An act of going after one’s discarded statements, bills, solicitations etc.

The Personal information of an institution or organization could be stolen in the f...

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...procedure to detect the possible red flags for the established policies. For example: Continuing with the example described above, the procedure to be implemented by the organization should be capable of distinguishing the forged id and authentic id.

3. A program must layout the appropriate actions the organization must take when the red flags are detected.

4. A program must be maintained regularly to address new threats.

Red flag rules concept is mainly being used in financial institutions that permit customer accounts, to have multiple payments & transactions, such as retail brokerage account, credit card account, margin account etc.

The most common categories of red flags are:

 Alerts, notifications or warnings

 Suspicious documents

 Suspicious identification information

 Unusual use of a covered account

 Notices from customers, victims about the crime