Identity Theft Research Paper

Identity theft has become the new era of crime, as we know it. Identity not only ruins the lives of their victims but their crimes also leave a lasting effect. Identity theft can happy to anyone and the fact that these crimes can be committed in numerous ways makes the general public greatly susceptible to these crimes. In this paper we I will present a general overview of identity theft; discuss the most common ways to commit identity theft, present examples and then discuss the rights of victims of identity theft.
According to the FBI’s general overview, Identity theft involves the misuse of another individual’s personal identifying information for fraudulent purposes. Some of these purposes include credit card fraud, mortgage fraud, and …show more content…
The report stated that two weeks prior t the incident managers at various Verizon Wireless stores were alerted by their corporate security manager regarding a fraud ring based out of Chicago. “The complaint indicates that the fraud ring was somehow linking stolen social security numbers from a hospital in the South to Verizon phone numbers. Suspects will then contact Verizon Wireless by telephone and access accounts with the stolen social security numbers.” Upon gaining access to the accounts the identity thieves would then have the primary account holders device transferred to a device that they had in their possession. After having the services for the device switched to another cell phone the thieves would then asked to be placed as authorized users on their victims account unbeknownst to their victims. Before the victim even had a chance to process what had happened to their devices the thieves were already racking up charges on their accounts. This is one of hundreds of examples of how identity thieves are able to “successful” obtain and use stolen personal information from their …show more content…
Technology is steadily advancing. We live in a world know where people can make telephone calls from watches. As we look at these advances as a positive so does identity thieves. The advance in technology consequently widens their playing field. Lately, websites have been taking steps to increase the security of their users. This is because identity thieves have learned to hack into computers and databases to obtain the information they need for their crimes. Once, upon a time people were encouraged to use the same password for various online accounts. Today, that belief has been dismissed due to the risks that it may cause people who become victims to identity theft. Having the same passwords for all your online accounts basically gives an identity theft access to all of your accounts if they are able to obtain your password. Also, it is important to place passwords or security codes on cell phones and computers. There is a lot of personal information that we save on our cell phones or computers. If you happen to loose one of them and they are not password protected identity thieves now have all the information they need to steal your identity in the palms of their

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