Identity Theft (PII) - Research Paper Example

Identity Theft Introduction Identity theft is the crime that involves stealing of a person’s private information “in order to impersonate that person in a legal sense”, according to Vacca (2005, p.137). When a person’s identity is stolen, he is at great risk of facing a terrifying number of monetary and individual dealings done in his name by the thief. Technology, along with its pros, has introduced exceedingly technical and chic means of acquiring someone’s basic identifying information.

Whatever means the thief uses, identity theft brings great damage to the victim’s name and reputation as the victim is solely left responsible for whatever financial or personal loss he faces. One often has to reveal bits of his personal information while doing online transactions, such as, his name, address, telephone number, bank information, credit card information, and etcetera1. The thief, after stealing this information, can misuse it by, for instance, applying for loans in the victim’s name, changing his billing address, obtaining driving license, applying for jobs, applying for insurance or new banking accounts, getting authorization for electronic transfers by using the victim’s electronic signature, or any other fraud.

How Identity Theft is Accomplished On the internet, identity theft is being accomplished using techniques like sending Trojan horses, which are destructive programs, into the computer system, and important passwords and useful information like social security number is transferred to the thief. Another way to steal identity is email phishing. The victim is sent emails telling the victim that they are from so-and-so enterprise and scamming him by directing him to a fake website which asks for his personal information.

Though, internet identity theft has made people uncertain about shopping and selling online, checking their bank statements online, visiting auction websites or entering into business contracts or transactions; however, computer forensics2 has played its part in helping law enforcement agencies in gathering digital evidence and identifying stolen identities as well as the criminals involved (Newman, 2009). Identity theft has also raised the problem of cyber stalking. Anderson (2008), who works with NTI (New Technologies, Inc.) writes that: NTI was involved in a case where an individual assumed the identity of a past employee that had been discharged by a business.

That identity was used, over the Internet, to terrorize a female Human Resources Manager who had fired the individual. After several weeks of investigation we discovered that the communications were fabricated by a peer worker within the corporation. This, and many other such cases occurring due to insecure internet environment, have been identified and solved by forensic computing strategies. Ethical Issues There are some socio-ethical issues regarding identity theft. It is important to educate the users of internet and computer systems about “intellectual property rights issues, privacy/ surveillance issues, access to data issues and issues of human-computer interaction” (Stahl, Carroll-Mayer & Norris, 2006, p.298). They should be able to relate principled reasoning to ethical cases.

They should know that the other person’s identity is something that is his own property and not theirs; that they have no right upon others’ personal information, and they cannot use or disclose it without the owner’s permission. A virtual world businessman should respect his employees’ and clients’ personal identification data and should take measures to lock and protect the databases and data warehouses from unauthorized access. Even at very personal level, an internet user must know that he is supposed to protect and defend the second person’s identification information and at the same time, he should be aware of security breaches proposed by the World Wide Web so that he is able to protect his own identity.

Conclusion Putting everything together, it is very important for the consumers to remain alert while they are interacting with the online community. In spite of so many laws, legislations and Acts that have been passed to ensure the consumers’ protection online, still cases happen where they can become a victim to fraudulent activities and scams put forward by retail companies and vendors. Though, there are numerous true and honest websites performing in a sincere and straightforward fashion, but still, it is always a sensible idea to protect one’s identity and personal information before giving it out.

It is vital to educate the e-consumers about their rights of protection so that they do not get trapped in the hands of criminals. The more the awareness about the consumer protection, the lesser will be the fraudulent activities taking place in the online world. References Anderson, M.R. (2008). Identity theft in financial crime cases. Identity Theft: Computer Forensics to the Rescue. Retrieved August 7, 2011, from http://www.forensics-intl.com/art18.html Newman, R.C. (2009). Computer Security: Protecting Digital Resources.

USA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Stahl, B., Carroll-Mayer, M., & Norris, P. (2006). Legal, professional, and ethical content. Forensic Computing: The Problem of Developing a Multidisciplinary University Course. Retrieved August 7, 2011, from http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~bstahl/publications/2006_forensic_computing_course_development.pdf Vacca, J.R. (2005). Identity theft. Computer Forensics: Computer Crime Scene Investigation. USA: Cengage Learning.