The Keyboard: Weapon of Choice for Many of Today's Most Dangerous Criminals

In 1999, a man decided to purchase a Social Security number using an illegal online source. He used that number to find the address and personal information of a young woman with whom he was obsessed. His criminal activity gave him the information he needed to find her, and he did. She was murdered as a result.

Every day, millions of people receive perfectly legitimate-looking emails from what appears to be their personal bank or other familiar service. They respond with the information requested only to later find bank accounts emptied by identity thieves.

Every day, thousands of people are rejected for car loans, home loans and even certain jobs without really understanding why. If they did a bit of homework, they might learn of several unpaid credit accounts in their name that were established by an identity thief without their awareness. How did it happen? It might have been that credit card purchase they attempted online a few years ago that never seemed to be properly effectuated.

Identity theft is one of the world’s fastest growing crimes. It has been described as an epidemic and “the crime of the millennium.” The reported instances of identity theft continue to grow exponentially and there is no end in sight.

Many identity thieves operate in traditional fashion. They steal wallets or break into homes to get the information they need to implement their nefarious schemes. Some will go so far as to rummage through garbage to find the data they need to create their crimes. They may dig through file cabinets at places where you do business or they might just keep their eyes wide open while you are using the ATM.

An increasingly large number of today’s identity thieves, however, rely on technology and, particularly, the internet as a springboard for their crimes. They use advanced technological savvy and the high degree of anonymity the internet can provide as a means by which to steal from others. Online identity theft is increasing at a faster rate than the problem as a whole and there is absolutely no reason to believe it will decrease in the foreseeable future.

Consider just a few examples of online identity theft schemes. The most famous is probably “phishing.”

This term is usually used to refer to the act of sending a mass email requesting valuable personal data to thousands, if not millions of online users. The emails may look quite authentic and an unsuspecting new computer user may very well fall for the plan. By the time they realize they were dealing with a criminal, it is often too late.

Certain malicious spy-ware and malaware programs can infect your computer without you even knowing it and may be providing third parties with personal information you would never want them to have. File-sharing networks, if incorrectly used, may allow other users around the world to secretly access all of the data stored on your computer including valuable personal data.

There are other ways of conducting online identity theft, but all of the techniques do have one thing in common--their effectiveness can be reduced by following some tested and proven strategies for combating online identity theft.

To whom can you safely give information? How can you distinguish a legitimate business from a scam? Are there ways of protecting one’s computer from intrusion? If you are victimized, what actions should you take in response to the situation?

Many computer users do not know the answers to those questions. But they should.

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