Introduction
In today’s world the most rapidly rising crime is identity theft. The true victims are those people who lose their valuables, names and it mostly come into view that right wounded of this most spreading crime are lenders who pay high amount to the criminals. These lenders set maximum prices to achieve their required goals. It is a type of crime in which someone own someone else’s complete personality including name, credit card number, without informing the victim about the intention of performing any illegal activity. Victims of this dangerous crime bear severe penalty in case they are held answerable for these illegal activities. On the other hand to steal some one’s identity is not an easy tasks. Identity theft is occurred when someone steals and uses others’ personal information, including numbers related to Social Security, names, and payment numbers of credit cards, without any permission from the owner, in order to commit fraud and / or other crimes.
This crime may takes several forms depending upon the information held with the criminals. Thieves may steal information about; renting an apartment, obtaining credit cards or loans, and may be establishing utility services by using the victim’s name. This crime is generally detected only at the time when the crime victims review their credit card report or statement, and notice charges that they actually did not incur. Despite the serious nature of this crime, mostly it is resolved easily by the victim’s report of the unauthorized utilization of his/her identity including credit card etc. however; in few cases it may cost huge financial loss to the victims and may bring bad name and reputation to them. The victims of identity theft may lose opportunities for employment in major organizations and even may get rejected by banks or other institutions for loans for education, car, and housing which may be due to the bad reputation depicted on their credit card report. In some cases the victims of identity theft were arrested for the crimes which they actually did not committed at all.
Identity Theft Requisites
Surprisingly small information is required to take off a victim. The agreeable information is name and security number to a person’s uniqueness. Countless records in the world are entered to these number which are once attained. Practically it is inconsequential to exceed oneself off the same as the victim. Conversely an addition of other database can treat similarly like present or preceding address, date of birth, contact cell phone number, profession, ownership etc. Formerly the basic identifying data is obtained it is then clear to submit an application for the demand of credit card, loans. Moreover one can make changes on present account data, and also demand for updating of licenses or issue of new passwords. .
Potential damages of Identity Theft
Identity theft has constantly been used by the criminals as the road to entrust many of the other kind of misappropriation, stealing and cheating but by utilizing internet it has been boosting up day by day. From the actual name of the victim, identity thieves submit an application for obtaining dual credits cards, loans etc. They jog these financial statement updates to the utmost, and end up finally when they fail to build the expenses. This is chiefly very easy process by the use of internet, as internet lacks the ability to identify the candidate’s character/personality. This deceitful balance sheet can sum to millions of dollars. Formerly they are unpaid or behind the schedule, creditors bother the innocent victims for fee. The standard of victim’s life effect badly as they have to face very expensive and agonizing procedure to bring back or re-establish their reputation.
In identity thefts usually misdeed connected with economic crimes are of varied ways, consisting of card deception to the diversity of telemarketing. The theft of auto parts makes it easy by deception certification they also comprise robberies of different categories wherever the criminal gets uniqueness of information by accident. In addition it includes violence, bombing and imitation. Mostly identity theft occur in consign of work making it totally expensive and severe offense. On the other hand business and people can avoid identity theft by taking few defensive steps on company belongings which are Community, material goods, methods and proprietary .
Identity Theft in United State
The augment in crime to identity theft leads to sketching of supposition. In 1998 an act was passed in United States named as Deterrence Act, earlier then United States senate the Federal trade Commission came into existence. The crimes thrash out by FTC which makes use of customer credit to hand over loan deception, finance fraud, property fraud and armed forces frauds. The decree currently constructs the custody of several ways of identification. Conversely in favor of federal jurisdiction towards accuse, the crime consists of a recognition document to facilitate each of the following:
a) Issue is believed to be raised by US.
b) Implemented by US
c) Sent by the correspondence via e-mail
d) Used in a way that influence trade commerce
Federal punishment for this crime was decided 5 to 30 years depending upon the severity of crime and some estimated fines were also to be charged. Federal Trade Commission has the power to track the assessment value of losses and also the amount of incidents. Their facts narrate mostly to customer monetary crime and not the wide variety of all detection based crime. Special types of punishments apply resting on the condition or situation in case if charges are taken into consideration by the state agencies.
In year 2005 round about 3.7% of mature residents of America were the victim of identity theft reported by FTC in a statement forwarded in year 2007. In the year 2008 just about 10 million victims were there in United States. That figure has only increased over the precedent two decades and it is expected that it will get the highest level. When the financial condition of the country is in disaster then citizen lost their jobs and also currency being stiff, as a result citizen suffer a lot. Undoubtedly with so much progress in the field of technology people all over the world trust blindly for the payments of bills, taxes etc., so there is nothing strange that identity theft is spreading more quickly. The legend of identity theft exists all around with no news of overcoming completely. Numerous citizens lost their real identity by this upcoming problem. The victims of identity theft have to go through plenty of official procedures and it required a long time to get the true identity back. It is such a violence which is damaging the citizens of US in extreme extent .
Citizens of whole country are very much worried for their money due to increased rate of identity theft. It is now general problem that citizens’ identity is stolen. Household fraud is also increasing in the same ratio, but citizens who have their income limit below dollar 50k are quiet save than those having their income crossing dollar 70k. The quantity of this crime increase day by day and it is estimated that it will build more and more in coming years. Internet and money delivering card are the main sources through which citizens lost their valuable identities in the community. It is therefore noticed that 59 percent of fraud takes place in the year 2008 by opening new license cards .
Only two states first California and the second Wisconsin have created a center of privacy security to help out their residents to keep them safe from this uprising identity theft problem. In the year 2009 to 2010, Deval Patrick the governor of Massachusetts made a promise to stabilize customer safety with the desires of minute business holder. The center of customer dealings and business maintenance declared specific amendments to the rule of identity theft maintenance that safeguards the identity of citizens. Finally in 2010 these modified amendments seemed to be working. Their rules are cleared that their system of protecting citizen identity is flexible to little businesses and would not be capable of griping too much of personal data. The IRS has made a dedicated unit for helping those citizen which were paying taxes and were the serious victim of identity theft. Mostly criminals utilize a robbed SSN for filing an artificial tax arrival and try to get a fake repayment before in the filling period .
Prevention Measures
The prevention measures for reducing / eliminating identity theft are broadly categorized into two categories including ones at the lenders or business end and ones at the consumer end. These prevention measures, if adopted properly, will reduce and even eliminate identity theft of all kinds. Both of these prevention measures are briefly elaborated below:-
- Business-end Prevention Measure
- Consumer-end Prevention Measures
Generally the consumer-end preventive measures include retaining personal information to individual level and sharing it to the authorized personnel only if it is deemed essential, safeguarding walled and purse from thieves, properly disposing off the financial and personal documents which are no more required, and the most important one is to regularly keeping a check on the credit card reports and statements for any specious activity. To recover the losses incurred due to the identity theft, a victim should contact the crediting company and file the claim through a complaint. More detailed preventive steps may include avoiding spam emails, not paying to unknown company online, not telling credit card information to even close friends etc. Another simple identity theft preventive measure is to regularly change the pin of credit card and password of online accounts. If a bank statement gets late then the customer must contact the issuing authority and tell them about it. In case a customer moves to another location then he / she must inform the crediting company well in time and get his / her address changed accordingly .
Conclusion
Identity theft is a crime of modern world which has spread across the globe like a jungle fire. The most affected countries are the developed countries whose citizens rely mostly on e-commerce. This crime has various forms ranging from misuse of credit card to misuse of name. Various victims of this crime have suffered financial losses and some have even got arrested. In order to avoid becoming a victim of this crime, care must be taken in handling personal information documents and regular check of credit card statement must be carried out. The effects of identity theft have impeded the implementation of various other innovations in the field of e-commerce.
New laws and regulations are to be implemented in order to fight the identity theft to full extent. Although the criminals of this crime tend to be harmless to the victim in terms of any direct physical damage but the indirect stress and financial losses are too much for a normal citizen. US has a significant number of victims of this crime, so it such a policy must be implemented which protects not only the customers from becoming victims of this crime but also the already victimized individuals should be compensated and their credit card reputation should be brought back to normal level.
References
Ethan, P. (2006). Identity Theft: Protecting Yourself from an Unprotected World. Chicago: Moody Publishers.
John, R. V. (2003). Identity Theft. New Jersey (NJ): Prentice Hall Professional.
Martin, T. B. (2009). Identity Theft Handbook: Detection, Prevention, and Security. Hoboken (NJ): John Wiley & Sons.
Rachael, H. (2010). Identity Theft. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish.
Sandra, K. H., & Tracy, G. M. (2010). Identity Theft: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara (CA): ABC-CLIO.
