Identity theft, or ID theft, has become the bane of modern society and its propensity to keep personal and public records online and in different institutions. In the yesteryears, identity theft was kept at a minimal level because physical, tangible records were in use, such as paper and documents, and that no one ever thought of combining a persons medical, financial, personal, or criminal information in a single file.
With the advent of technology however, man has come up with ways to make transactions and identification more easy and convenient within all sectors of society. With the right user name, password, E-mail address, bank account number, PIN codes, or credit information, any authorized institution of the Western world can access a persons financial information and hordes of confidential data. Society is only one step away to consolidating a persons information into a single account, and jumbles them all together within a supposedly impenetrable database of sorts.
Malicious people, hackers, and identity stealers are in no short supply however. It is the nature of men to destroy what they have built. And so, in the increasingly wired world we live in, and the information that flows between the channels, it is only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, intrudes through the channels of information and steals somebody elses identity.
Identity theft is defined as a criminal action that seeks to use, in a deceitful way, another persons identity for unlawful financial or medical gain, or simply to evade lawful authorities. Whatever the type of ID theft, the impetus behind the criminal act is always to exploit the resources and privileges of the victim, or implicate the victim with particular sort of unlawful act.
Actually, identity theft is a misnomer, since nobody can really steal an intangible concept such as an identity. Identity thieves can only use another persons identity. There are fives ways in which identities can be used. One is for business or commercial exploits. A common practice is to use another financial institutions identity to secure a credit.
Second is masquerading as someone else to get a persons financial information for his own use either to withdraw funds or to obtain goods and services in the name of the victim. Third is for a criminal to assume an identity to acquire medical benefits. The unlawful user can steal an identity and use the medical privileges of the victim such as medicine, health insurance benefits, medical care, and use them for his/her advantage.
Fourth, criminals can use another persons identity when apprehended for a crime. Through the use of a victims public records or through a fake ID, a criminal can present that information to the authorities and not come later for the court hearing. Being scott-free, the criminal can elude the authorities for another time.
Fifth is the use of another persons identity for use in day-to-day life. With this type of ID theft, one can partially or completely assume the identity of another person in various areas of life; from important things such as shopper information, to something as trivial as a social networking account.
Author Resource:-
Matthew Stanton writes an article about an ID Theft and why it is important for people to know about this crime and what it can do to their lives. Simply visit this site for information at http://www.identitytheftlabs.com/
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://newezinearticles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
