What is Identity Theft?
Identity theft occurs when one’s personal information is stolen and is used by another person. People usually commit identity theft for several reasons, one of the mentionable reasons would be for financial reasons, others may include illegal immigration, terrorism and spying. According to the FBI, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States. In 2006, identity thieves stole about $56 billion dollars in total; on average, each victim of identity theft lost around $6300 dollars.
The crimes that an identity thief can commit with your personal information range from applying for a credit card under your name before subsequently racking up prodigious charges to poaching your tax refund. In some cases, identity thieves are even able to assume an unsuspecting person’s identity entirely, obtaining identification bearing their name and often committing crimes “as that person.” A very recent incident that happened in Florida on 28th January 2022, where a man used his twin brother’s identity to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in military veterans’ benefits.
How does Identity Theft Happen?
According to the Federal Trade Commission, there are some of the most common methods that the criminals use to gain access to victims. Firstly, it could be through the user email. Stealing your email and most importantly work/business email could be devastating. They can fake the identity and can perform malicious activities from the user’s computer. Secondly, the most common of all, phishing. Redirecting to a person by making a person open an invalid link through email, scan a QR code etc. Cyber criminals usually try to deceive individuals through such activities to capture personal information and for fraudulent purposes. Thirdly, through skimming, where sometimes thieves are able to manipulate credit card processing machines and ATMs by inserting a device that captures the account information of whoever uses it. Fourthly, the most surprising of all, dumpsters, who may be using your old torn receipts and piece them together to gather information such as names, bank name etc. Something which would be very useful for them to open another bank account of the same identity and assume to be you completely.
Precaution and things to do if Identity is stolen
It eventually comes down to our everyday habits about how much information we are providing to third parties such as the websites, banks and so on. There are some simple but effective ways of protecting ourselves from identity theft.
- Protecting the SSN number: An extremely valuable piece of information for an identity thief, something that we definitely need to safeguard. It is a crucial identity that is used in several legal papers, business documents, or may be in insurance papers as well. If you doubt that your SSN has been compromised, notify the Social Security Administration as early as possible.
- Entering financial information in verified, official sites: Nowadays, there are number of ecommerce platforms which may looked real, and you could be encouraged to purchase from that site by entering your credit card information. One quick way to check whether the website is secured/encrypted is by checking the mentioning of ‘https’ instead of ‘http’.
- Protecting PINs: In ATM transaction we might be required to enter our PIN number for withdrawing money. Make sure that one is shoulder spoofing you while entering the PIN. Informing the Bank(s) is the best thing to do if your credit card has been stolen or has been lost, or if you think that you had been dealing with identity theft.
- Avoid Spam Offers/Calls: This is probably the most frustrating of all the incidents that is happening currently. Often, people are now receiving fake calls where the callers are pretending to be border service agents/ embassy people demanding for money and personal information. Alongside these calls, a person might be receiving various text messages about multiple offers or discount on certain items or programs.
It is not fully possible to completely diminish the existence of identity theft, because as the world is growing, we are putting more and more of our information for the world to see. While exercising common sense will always be your best defence against identity thieves, the hope is that advances in identity verification will also make life more difficult for criminals in the future.
I would like to add that if you receive any spam calls you should report them to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (1-888-495-8501). This helps the Canadian government collect information on the types and frequencies of calls to better help protect Canadians.
For more info check out: https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/report-signalez-eng.htm
I think the scariest thing about crimes like identity theft is that, unlike most other crimes, it’s one that a victim has very little precautions against other than their own actions. Whether through poor secrecy, poor choice of passcodes, forgetfulness, or unsecure online practices, identity theft seems to be a crime of our own making and doing, and you can’t exactly buy a security system that covers all your bases. What’s worse is that, as you pointed out, things will only get larger in magnitude as we continue to move online, and users will have to be that much more vigilant to protect themselves.
These tips you’ve given may seem like common sense, but I do think they’re important to keep in mind of. Though, I think saying “avoid spam calls” is a bit simplistic, as identifying the spam is typically the issue, and people don’t knowingly fall for them. As spam calls get more sophisticated, this advice would be even harder to follow. I feel that better advice would simply be to avoid unknown numbers in general; if you’re expecting a call from a clinic or something, make sure you jot the number down beforehand so you can safely answer it, but if not just let it ring. After all, even if the government is calling you about your taxes (They would not), its not like they would arrest you for not picking up the phone.
A very good blog post and an important introduction to identity theft and ways how to safeguard our information! This is one thing I try to ensure I do not fall for. On the http vs https part, I have seen videos where a ‘good’ hacker shows why you should avoid ‘http’. By going onto an eCommerce website and changing the link, it appeared (from what I remember) that he could see the last purchase made on that same website from another individual and their information attached to their purchase. Remaining vigilant and stopping and paying attention to detail before continuing on a website or other activity is essential.
Thank you for the post! Identity theft is a crime that seems to occur frequently, even despite the protective counter-measures one might try and adopt. I have come across several websites that appear legitimate. When such “legitimate-seeming” websites ask you to enter your credit card information, it can be difficult, and in some cases, impossible to discern their malicious intent. I was unaware of checking for “https” as opposed to “http”, but going forward, I’ll be better positioned to discern legitimate platforms from ones intended to perpetrate crimes such as identity theft against you. I am aware of numerous identity theft cases. In many of these, smaller amounts of money have been stolen, ranging from $2000 to $6000, which seems to be an ideal amount of money for petty crooks. However, larger civil cases have brought forth large-scale identity theft charges against perpetrators (take Michael Avenatti, as of late). Essentially, from what I can tell, people will stop at nothing to steal another’s identity and steal what they can.
Thank you for this informative post. This is one of the post that gave me idea how can i lose my identity to someone and how not to fall for it and keep myself my privacy secure.
Great post. As several of your sources are out of the United States some of your information is targeted more towards United States citizens as opposed to Canadian citizens. Most importantly, we don’t have SSN’s, but we do have SIN’s. Here is a collection of Canadian resources to use if anybody suspects identity theft in any capacity: https://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/04333.html#sec15. Great tips overall though! It’s always good to do our part to stay updated on this type of thing because these scams are evolving all the time.
Very interesting post! Identity theft is a serious and common occurrence still in today’s world. It is important for people to not over share, even if it’s on social media, to followers who one might “trust”. People will often receive calls and even if it is tempting, or unintentional, people should be hesitant in giving out personal information. Public wifi is another way identity theft occurs and other posts have talked about how easily people’s information is accessed with that. As what we learned in class, it is important to also use strong passwords, by making is very complex.
Thank you for making this post, I wasn’t aware of all the different ways it’s possible to have your identity stolen. The fact that it could be done through receipts, or through a manipulated ATM is particularly shocking to me. A small thing I’d like to point out is that Canadians don’t actually have SSN numbers, we have an equivalent called SIN. The Canadian government actually has a pretty informative webpage on protecting your SIN, and what you should do if you think it’s stolen: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/sin/protect.html.
This is an amazing post, considering that in todays world identity theft is increasing , a lot of people’s accounts are getting hacked and on top of that we as human beings who use technology in our day-to-day life we should be cautious, whenever we create an account on an app it askes for our email and we just provide without knowing the consequences of it and on top of that whenever we sign up for something we receive the terms and conditions which 99% of times we ignore and we still wonder why are data is accessed by everyone but I feel like this isn’t something we can escape considering the digital aspect of our society and we are bound to live within it but what we can do is follow some ways to protect our data and information like using strong passwords and using MFA’s to protect our identity and data.
This is a really great post to familiarize yourself with what identity fraud is and how to avoid it. The amount of spam calls, emails and texts that I receive has definitely increased in recent years and so staying vigilent is becoming more important. It is unfortunate that you would not be able to know whether or not your identity has been stolen until something bad happens. These crimes usually target vulnerable demographics that often do not know better and click on bad links or give out their personal information. Hopefully more can be done to prevent these crimes to protect those vulnerable communities.
Thanks for sharing these tips! I think it’s crazy that many times when people’s identities are stolen – they have no idea how! You mentioned spam calls in your post, and I would love to know what you think about “No Caller ID”. Typically, avoiding calls when you don’t know the number or No Caller ID pops up is the recommended approach for keeping yourself safe. However, recently I got a parking ticket because the City of Calgary called me to move my car – but I didn’t pick up since it had No Caller ID! I think it’s very interesting that some city/government services don’t use caller ID, and that may be why so many people get tricked into fake, but believable calls like that!
That was an amazing post to read! Considering what is happening these days, we can easily expect that that kind of hacking will appear. It is so scary how all your personal information can be taken by another person and that person can deal as if he is literally you. One can believe that alot of crimes can be done under the person’s name. I would agree to the point that one can protect themselves by not responding to spam call. Nowdays, pressing on a single buttom can lead to devastating results which can lead not only having some of your private information leaked but ALL your identity. It was really a well-explained and insightful post to read.
This is really a good post! When I finished reading this blog, I was deeply shocked because I had no idea that the theft of identity would cause such a large amount of financial loss. What is even more shocking is that our personal information can be stolen unknowingly, and even an unfamiliar phone call may allow our information to be stolen by others. I would like to add that. Now the Internet has become a part of life, and online shopping is especially popular. When we shop online, we should first confirm that it is a legitimate business and then provide personal information.
I think your post is great. Dwight Shrute most eloquently elaborates the consequences of identity theft by saying, “Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!”. Identity theft has been at the forefront of news and movies for many years and with every aspect of life being digitized, I think now more than ever, people need to be very careful in safeguarding their information. In fact, I heard that politicians are now wearing gloves to avoid their fingerprints being reproduced for nefarious purposes. For this reason, I think companies and governments should take extra precautions to protect their citizen’s data and give firewall protection to avoid future identity theft. Overall, I think it was a great post!
The topic is really intriguing and informative. Even though many people now know the risks of identity theft, there are still people in third world countries who do not know how bad it can get. I am from Bangladesh and there I have seen many people getting in trouble as their identity was stolen to do something illegal. I have personally seen such an incident. Somehow the scammers got hold of one of my uncle’s National Identity Document (NID) which is equivalent to SIN here in Canada. Using just the Identification Number they were able to create a bank account and used it for their organization’s transaction. My uncle came to know about this 10 years later, when he tried to open a bank account in that very bank and got declined as someone with his identity already exists. The police is still investigating on that matter. But it is really frightening to think that someone else can do anything under your name.
This is a very interesting post. Identity theft is a very scary thing. Just the thought that someone can copy your whole identity and pin crimes on you, is unnerving. From reading your post, it seems that there are multiple ways for your identity to get stolen, such as leaked emails, leaked financial information, and even receipts in the dumpster. The incident you mentioned, where a man used his twin brother’s identity to get money from military benefits is very surprising, I can’t believe that there are actually people out there that do things like that. This talk of identity theft reminds me of one of my favorite movies which is actually called ‘”Identity Thief”. Even though it’s a comedy movie, it definitely shows the effectiveness of identity theft. Give it a watch when you get the chance.
Great post! It is always good to be cautious when it comes to disclosing your information, but it is even more important considering the rise in identity theft as mentioned in your post. I have heard that an increased amount of SINs have been compromised in the last two years due to CERB and other similar supports. With the stress and anxiety as a result of the pandemic, I can understand why some people may fall victim to CERB scam calls, especially when the support is very needed. It is also how shocking it can be for someone’s identity to be compromised in some way, like with ATM pins for example. When it comes to dumpsters, I never would have thought that information can be recovered from such places, especially since people tend to discard things while believing they are gone for good.
Identity theft is something that is often not as talked about even though it’s a very prevalent issue. It’s almost like white noise in the world of crime in the sense that many seem to have just accepted it as a part of the world. It’s always nice to see an article or post touching on the topic of identity theft. Overall, a good read!
This is a very interesting post! It really feels that this kind of thing is only possible in movies but thinking of these things happening, in reality, scares me a lot! I cannot even understand what if you are caught, maybe with a probability of less than 10%, still it will be the biggest shame on that person, no one will ever trust that person. I think one should avoid doing these kinds of crimes as repercussions are more deadly than those tiny profits. People should check twice before providing any personal information to anyone and the person is trustworthy.
Interesting post!
Since I came to Canada to study in U of C, I’m always worried about my credit card information printed on the card can be peeped at by someone next to me when I’m tapping my credit card to pay for something. This is because if they got my credit card information, even though without the card PIN, they still could use my credit card to shop online. What I always do while tapping my credit card to pay for something is using my fingers to cover up the card information printed on the card.
For online banking, I always manually enter the URLs of the online bank websites in the address bar, rather than search those websites on Google. I think this is a good way to prevent me from entering scam websites accidentally.
Good Post! It is interesting and rather shocking to learn that all the way back in 2006, 56 billion dollars were stolen by identity thieves and that each victim lost around $6300 dollars. $6300 is a large amount of money for most of us, it’s around an entire semester’s worth of tuition. The thought of losing that in the blink of an eye because someone stole your identity is be terrifying. The fact that this was all the way back in 2006, makes me worried about how much money is being and has been stolen in more recent times, with all the advances that we’ve made regarding digital identification, there will no doubt be many new ways to exploit these systems and steal others identities for profit.