How to Avoid Identity Theft
10 June, 2011
Hands up if you use the same password across multiple websites and for multiple services?
Hands up if you have ever clicked on an email from someone that you do not know as you thought it was intriguing or you were mislead into believing that you knew the sender?
Identify theft on the internet is now a massive problem for all of us. If your identity is stolen then it can quickly be used to create fake passports, open bank accounts and get credit cards, loans, state benefits and documents such as driving licenses in your name.
How big is the problem of identity theft?
Every day there are about £1.6 million in fraudulent credit and debit card transactions in the UK. The BBC money program reported that identity fraud is growing at 500% per year and the total annual cost to the UK is 1.7bn and over 100,000 UK individuals are victims of this crime each year.
What are the main ways that online identity theft occurs?
Exactly how your identity gets stolen is as difficult to pin point online as it is offline. For example; I have had my credit card cloned twice but I am not sure if the data was stolen online or offline but I have to assume that it was offline in a shop as my pin number was used with the cloned card. But at what shop/restaurant was my card data stolen? I have no idea.
However, here is a list taken mainly from Wikipedia’s very comprehensive page on identity theft:
• Retrieving personal data from redundant IT equipment and storage media including PCs, servers, PDAs, mobile phones, USB memory sticks and hard drives that have been disposed of carelessly at public dump sites, given away or sold on without having been properly sanitized
• Using public records about individual citizens, published in official registers such as electoral rolls
• Stealing personal information from computers using malware, particularly Trojan horse keystroke logging programs or other forms of spyware
• Hacking computer networks, systems and databases to obtain personal data, often in large quantities
• Exploiting breaches that result in the publication or more limited disclosure of personal information such as names, addresses, Social Security number or credit card numbers
• Advertising bogus job offers online in order to accumulate resumes and applications typically disclosing applicants' names, home and email addresses, telephone numbers and sometimes their banking details
• Exploiting insider access and abusing the rights of privileged IT users to access personal data on their employers' systems
• Infiltrating organizations that store and process large amounts or particularly valuable personal information
• Impersonating trusted organizations in emails, SMS text messages, phone calls or other forms of communication in order to dupe victims into disclosing their personal information or login credentials, typically on a fake corporate website or data collection form (phishing)
• Brute-force attacking weak passwords and using inspired guesswork to compromise weak password reset questions
• Browsing social networking websites for personal details published by users, often using this information to appear more credible in subsequent social engineering activities
• Diverting victims' email or post in order to obtain personal information and credentials such as credit cards, billing and bank/credit card statements, or to delay the discovery of new accounts and credit agreements opened by the identity thieves in the victims' names
• Using false pretenses to trick individuals, customer service representatives and help desk workers into disclosing personal information and login details or changing user passwords/access rights (pretexting)
• Guessing Social Security numbers by using information found on Internet social networks such as Facebook and MySpace
How can identity theft affect me?
This can range in severity from people setting up fake email addresses and social networking profiles in order to communicate mischievously as you or to target one of your friends/acquaintances as you in order to get your friends more important personal data.
It may involve your credit card details being stolen and used for online shopping at financial cost (usually borne by the banks). You usually notice this kind of identity theft pretty quickly and can therefore stop it and the criminal will then move onto their next victim.
At the most extreme level it can involve your personal documents such as your passport/birth certificate/ national insurance number etc, being duplicated and then other people using your identity to live by rather than using their true identity for the purposes of anonymity. They may do this as they are illegal immigrants, to avoid creditors or because they are a criminal wanted by the police.
The issue with personal documents being faked and used is that it is very difficult to detect as you may not notice for years and then suddenly you will find out that you have a criminal record for a crime that you did not commit. Once you have a criminal record (illegitimately) then it can be very hard to clear your name.
You may have to track down the arresting police officer and ask them to go to court with you in support of you having the charges cleared. You may need to go through DNA testing or fingerprint testing to prove your innocence and this whole process can be expensive and can take years.
What can I do to protect myself from identity theft?
You can increase your personal security through a few simple measures:
1) Always ensure that your personal computer has an active firewall installed. Most computers come with the installed when you buy them but it is worth checking in your computers control panel – you can find this on a Windows machine by going to Start > Control Panel >Security Centre
2) Ensure that you have an up to date antivirus programme installed on your computer. There are free antivirus solutions such as AGV Free.
3) Always be cautious of emails from people that you do not know. Spam filters are quite good at capturing the majority of these emails but some get through. Just do not open an email from someone that you do not know or have not requested.
4) Do not click on pop up windows. Just click on the top right to close them.
5) Do not use the same password across multiple sites and do not put things like your pet’s name/husbands name/mothers name in the password as these could all be easily discoverable. It is worth looking at an online service with which to manage all of your passwords in one secure place. There are services such as 1password that offer a service where you simply have to remember one password to an online database that stores all of your other passwords, this is a paid for service with a cost of $39.99 (as of June 2011) it is available for both Mac and Windows users. There is also a free alternative that is just as effective but perhaps not quite so user friendly called Keepass.
6) Through using internet safety products that filter inappropriate content you will be kept away from websites that are high risk for identity theft. Of course we recommend CYBERminder as the best parental control software.
If you have any questions on internet safety then please contact us on our Facebook page and we will be happy to answer your queries.
