What Is Identity Theft

What is Identity Theft Identity –based crimes are considered to be one of the most significant and growing problems of the last 20 years due to the significant economic harm these offenses pose for victims(Holt & Turner, 2012). Identity theft occurs when someone steals your personal identifying information. This can be attributed to weaknesses in the structure in which personal information flows in society (White, 2005).This information may consist of the person’s social security number, name address, or driver’s license number. One of the old ways of obtaining this information was going through the victim’s mail or pretending to be a telemarketer to obtain personal information. Since the advancement of technology criminals have also improved the ways they steal your information. One of the improvements is the “swiper”. This technique works by making a copy of the person’s credit card information when the person presents it to purchase something. The next step is transferring the information to a fake credit card for the criminals own personal use. Thanks to the internet criminals may also remotely access your computer and still your information all from the comfort of their homes or anywhere in the world. Once this information is obtained the thief can use this information to buy themselves a few nice things all paid for by you, while in the process of ruining your credit.

Statistics and Identity Theft Crimes

The average number of U.S identity theft victims annually is 11, 571, 900 and the total financial loss attributed to identity theft in 2013 is 21 billion dollars (Identity theft/fraud statistics, 2013).Identity theft does not discriminate against age, race, or income. Anyone can be affected by identity theft. The most vulnerable age group to this crime ranges from age 18 to 24; followed by the age group 35 to 49. The most reported cases of identity theft involve financial motivation (Perl, 2003). Identity theft falls into three categories: financial identity theft, non-financial identity theft, and criminal record identity theft. Financial identity theft is the category that our paper will be focusing on. Non-financial identity theft involves telecommunications and utilities fraud or using the victim’s information to get government documents. This can be used to enter the country illegally or plan and execute terrorist attacks. Criminal record identity theft is basically the criminal using an innocent person’s clean record, meaning the person does not have a criminal record, to dodge being arrested.