2.3 Type of Identity Theft

There are more than 25 different types of identity theft and the list is not exhaustive. Basically, it can be classified into three primary category namely:

(a) Financial Identity Theft
(b) Criminal Identity Theft
(c) Other Types of Identity Theft

(a) FINANCIAL IDENTITY THEFT :   Financial identity theft is the manipulation of financial status or relationship of a person in monetary perspective like bank account, debit and credit cards. A consistent monitoring on the financial status is therefore required to combat this problem.

(b) CRIMINAL IDENTITY THEFT : It occurs when a culprit commits a crime using the victim's identity. The culprit may even present a false, bogus ID in the circumstances whereby the authorities caught them. If the crime is of a less serious degree, the victim may receive a summon from the court to appear for a crime not done by the victim. A criminal record may exist on the victim's name without the victim realizing it, until such circumstances arises like applying for an occupation or loan or in the worst scenario, an arrest warrant being issued upon the victim.

(c) OTHER TYPES OF IDENTITY THEFT :  In the filed of employment for example, the culprit may obtain an employment based on the victim's good name and other credentials. As the categories of identity theft is of exhaustive nature, it may also include; application theft, bankruptcy theft, commercial loan theft, election theft/ fraud, investors theft, merchant theft, medical health fraud, students loan theft and worker's compensation fraud.

The Unique Internet Identity Theft


As all of us are aware, the cyberspace is very and extremely vulnerable for all kinds of cyber threat including internet identity theft. This kind of theft is very different from and more devastating than the conventional identity theft because most of the victims are totally unaware that anything has been stolen from them until it is much too late. This unique form of theft works through the technology. The computer collects and stores all kinds of information pertaining to the individual using it in files hidden deep in the hard drive. Certain files like cache, browser history, and other temporary Internet files stores information like password, identification numbers, addresses, and others. So, the culprit in identity theft can obtain this information via two ways whereby the first way is either the person obtaining it when it is being sent over an unsecured transmission like without firewall or the culprit installs malicious software on the computer like malware or spyware which collects the data and automatically send it back to the culprit. Experts in the computer field has agreed on totality that the best way to combat this problem is via getting a good, updated Internet Security Solution like a complete antivirus program that is updated frequently.