Online Identity Theft

Online Identity Theft

When particular con artists masquerade themselves as certain individuals in their attempt of gaining financial or any other benefit, that concrete act of crime is called identity theft.Online identity theft is a certain type of the aforementioned phenomenon which is specifically happening online.According to recent studies, although a fast growing internet disease, online identity theft takes only about ten percent of the identity fraud cases worldwide.

However, according to other researches more than 800 people per hour are being victims of online identity theft, which throws a slightly different light on the previously mentioned studies, proving that not only conventional methods are being used for the means of identity theft worldwide.

The deceivers’ needs and skills are the decisive factors for the methods being used for extracting peoples’ information, such as: credit card numbers, addresses, social security numbers, etc.In the field of online identity theft, one of the most used procedures is simply known as phishing.

Phishing is a scam technique, a form of online identity theft, which is using the method of impersonating a certain legitimate institution in an attempt of deluding peoples’ attention in sending their personal information, which will then be used by the thieves for their own financial, or any other gain.Acting as a site/institution with which those people have had their share of certain dealings in the past, phishers (the term originates from the word fishers) are using e-mail, or site-application baits for misleading people to believe that they’re communicating with the known dealer, thus share their own personal information which are allegedly needed for an official and an immediate cause.

The method of phishing is actually a simple one to notice, and all you have to do is to be careful when you’re clicking the shortcut links, whether received through an e-mail, or stumbled upon on some particular sites.The phishers depend on your carelessness when surfing the internet, so they are using e-mail messages or suspicious applications on some sites (Facebook, eBay, etc.), which are asking you to click on a certain link, usually with a disturbing note that your account will be suspended if you don’t update your personal information, immediately!Afterwards, they’ll be redirected to the impersonating site which will look exactly as the original, where they’ll be politely asked to update their personal information, such as: e-mail, credit card number, etc. or they fill face account suspension or an immediate termination.This explicit farce is mere jibber-talk and nothing more, so the rightful decision to be made in that particular situation is to close the browser tab and get on with our lives.

The Federal Trade Commission and some other regulatory bodies are protecting us from the emerging treat of online identity theft, but the true help may come only from our own security measures and from our most needed desire of an ever-growing knowledge about the IT world we’re proudly living in.