Identity Theft - The Evolution of Identity Theft
When you refer to identity theft of earlier times, you will find that the history of identity theft was blood-stained. In earlier times, criminals used to kill the victim & assume his identity. With passage of time criminals learned that they need not kill the victim but just gathering the enough information about victim is enough. With this criminals checked ways to obtain bank statements, credit card information etc & started misusing it.
Telemarketing was the next idea misused by criminals. Telemarketers used to call people, telling them they won the lottery prize or jackpot. Then they asked for the financial details of the ‘winning’ victims, telling them that it is for verification. Thus the criminal obtained the financial details of victim & misused them in the same manner.
Finally, the use of Internet brought a ‘Revolution’ in Identity Theft history.
As the use of online transactions became popular, the criminal used to hack bank’s & other financial institute’s websites & obtain financial details & misuse them. This type of theft was restricted soon as banks & financial institutions put stricter security controls into practice. Some banks even started special security related departments and some hired processional help and outsourced their security.
The next idea used by criminals was ‘phishing’. With phishing the criminal designed websites to hack financial details of people. These websites look like any bank or financial websites. Then the criminals send spam email to customers, specifying fake links of the website which look similar to bank websites, with instructions to login to their bank account. When the victim goes to the link of websites & logs in there, the details of his login are sent to the fake website & the criminal misuses it.
identity fraud, identity theft, identity theft protection, lifelock, Phishing, prevent identity theft
