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What Is Identity Theft?
Identity theft has become a household phrase and is a subject that we have all become familiar with. Identity theft and identity fraud are terms defined by any crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person's personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain. Your personal data, especially social security numbers, bank account or credit card numbers and other identifying data can be used deceptively if they fall into the wrong hands.
Many people in the U.S. have reported that unauthorized persons have taken funds out of their financial accounts. In the worst cases, their identities have been hi-jacked altogether, running up vast debts and committing crimes while using the victims's names. In many cases, a victim's losses may include not only out-of-pocket financial losses, but additional financial costs associated with trying to restore his/her reputation in the community and correcting erroneous information for which the criminal is responsible.
Take for example one well known case study of identity theft by which a convicted felon was able to obtain more than $100,000 of credit, a federal home loan, motorcycles and handguns,.. and he did it in the victim's name. After all the damage that he caused, he continued to make life miserable for his victim by calling him on the phone to taunt him -- claiming that he could continue to pose as the victim for as long as he wanted because identity theft was not a federal crime at that time. Finally, the criminal filed for bankruptcy in the victim's name. While the victim and his wife spent more than four years and more than $15,000 of their own money to restore their credit and reputation, the criminal served a short sentence for making a false statement to obtain a firearm, but made no restitution to his victim for any of the harm he had caused.
This case, and others like it, prompted Congress in 1998 to create a new federal offense of identity theft. Unfortunately, the Internet Revolution, which allows 10,000 new Web pages to form each week, has continued to prove illusive when evening the playing field between security and deception.
