STEALTH SURFER - INTERNET PRIVACY AND SECURITY PLUG IN DEVICE
Safe Surfing - Internet Security And Privacy - Idenity Theft Prevention
StealthSurfer - Plug In USB Internet Security And Privacy Device
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Identity Theft - Facts And Information
Identity theft is the criminal abuse of consumers' personal details for financial or other gain. The main concern for consumers is financial crimes exploiting their credit worthiness to commit loan fraud, mortgage fraud, lines-of-credit fraud, credit card fraud, commodities and services frauds.
The common denominator to these crimes is a reliance by lenders and vendors on shared use of highly centralized national credit-rating services. With the centralization of financial services and the emergence of national retail outlets, businesses no longer personally know their customers. These facts do not escape the criminals. Other consumer crime "identity theft" statistics include check kiting, the bleeding of personal savings accounts, and theft and fraudulent use of credit cards.
With the rising awareness of consumers to an international problem, in particular through a proliferation of web sites and the media, the term "identity theft" has since morphed to encompass a much broader range of identification-based crimes. The more traditional crimes range from dead beat dads avoiding their financial obligations, to providing the police with stolen or forged documents thereby avoiding detection, money laundering, trafficking in human beings, stock market manipulation and even to terrorism.
"Identity theft" in itself is an oxymoron, generating confusion in circles attempting to reconcile the term with the crime. In the purest linguistic sense, someone's identity cannot be stolen. Human identity is a psychological or philosophical conversation. However, a person's "means of identification" can be used unlawfully and their "identification documents" can be stolen.
The Identity Theft Assumption and Deterrence Act (2003) [ITADA] amended the U.S. Code to include unlawful possession of "means of identification" as a crime alongside unlawful possession of identification documents. The ITADA makes knowingly transferring, possessing, or using without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person to commit other crimes, a crime in itself. It is punishable by an additional two years in jail [Title 18 > Part I > Chapter 47 > s.1028a of the U.S. Code].
Some people prefer the term "identity fraud" to describe when their means of identification has been exploited for an unlawful purpose. Others believe the thief does deprive the owner of his identity by replacing his reputation with the thief's. Many uses of the term focus on the act of acquiring the personal information necessary to perpetrate the personation.
A classic example of consumer-dependent financial crime occurs when Bob obtains a loan from a financial institution impersonating Peter. Bob uses Peter's personal identifiers that he has somehow acquired. These personal identifiers conform with the data retained on Peter by national credit-rating services. The identifiers include surname, given names, date of birth, Social Security number (U.S.), Social Insurance Number (Cda), current and former addresses etc. These data are all part of credit header information retained by credit-rating services. The crimes are self-revealing. When Peter defaults on payments the lenders become aware. With consumers being credit-dependent, the onus shifts to them to re-establish their credit-worthiness with the lending institutions and credit-rating services.
Less commonly understood outside criminal intelligence and law enforcement circles is the impact of identification-based concealment crimes. As with credit-dependent consumer financial crimes, criminals acquire legally attributed personal identifiers and then clone someone to them for concealment from authorities. Unlike credit-dependent financial crimes, they are non self-revealing, continuing for an indeterminate amount of time without being detected.
The crimes include illegal immigration, terrorism and espionage, to mention a few. It may also be a means of blackmail if activities undertaken by the thief in the name of the victim would have serious consequences for the victim. There are cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, such as obtaining medical treatment.
Legally attributed personal identifiers
Legally attributed personal identifiers are the root of all documents relied upon to establish that people are who they say they are. They come in two categories. Status by right to citizenship is recorded and archived by the state endorsed registrars of birth and nationally, in general, for babies born to citizens while abroad. National departments of immigration maintain status by right records on those granted permanent residency. National departments of immigration also maintain personal identifiers on people granted status by law or privilege as temporary residents. The identification documents issued are referred to as "foundation", or sometimes in North America, as "breeder" documents. Every other form of identification or travel document, whether a passport, driver's license or a wide variety of access tokens, should be traceable to a status by right or status by law or privilege record.
The technical means to forge identification documents is readily available through commercial sources. This very affordable technology [under $25,000 U.S.] produces documents at levels of sufficient quality to make them indiscernible as forgeries by employees at financial institutions, in the vendor industry, among national air carriers and even immigration officials.
Whether it be credit-dependent consumer financial crimes, or illegal immigration and terrorism, what criminals really need is access to legally attributed personal identifiers and document registration numbers from whatever source they can be obtained from. With the increasing centralization and access to electronic information systems containing personal information, the potential sources are exploding.
Personal Guardianship
The unlawful acquisition of legally attributed personal identifiers is made possible by serious breaches of privacy. For consumers it is usually due to personal naivete in who they provide their information to or carelessness in protecting their information from theft (e.g. vehicle break-ins and home invasions). Guardianship of personal identifiers by consumers is the most common intervention strategy recommended by the Federal Trade Commission, Canadian Phone Busters and most sites that address "identity theft". Personal guardianship issues include recommendations on what consumers may do to prevent their information getting into the wrong hands.
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