Identity theft is an act of crime in which certain scam artists are impersonating individuals in the mere attempt of gaining privileges of a varying kind, mostly financial one. If the con-procedure is taking place online, it’s known by the name of online identity theft. Online identity theft truly is a virtual, fast growing disease but according to some studies only 10% of the identity fraud bulk worldwide, belongs to that certain type of larceny.
The inner conflict occurs when we realize that according to other relevant researches more than 800 people are being scammed online, on hourly basis, which clearly demonstrates the growth of online identity theft as a part of the well-functioning global, fraud scheme.
Whether the information stolen from individuals will be their e-mail, social security number, credit card number or something else, it mostly depends on the skills and the needs of the con artists involved. In the field of online identity theft, one of the most used procedures is simply known as phishing.
Phishing is one of the techniques of online identity theft, used to impersonate a valid, trustworthy institution, for the cause of peoples’ manipulation and the extraction of their personal information, which are being used for criminal activities afterwards. The term originates from the hackers variation of the word fishing, alluding on the delusion of peoples’ basic matrix of understanding, with the lures being used through e-mails and/or sites, which falsely makes them believe they’re interacting with a concrete trustworthy institution they’ve previously had relations with.
The suspicious shortcuts are the main indicators of a possible phishing treat, so if we’re careful about that simple fact we can avoid the phishing phenomenon successfully. They are trying to get to the naïve part of the population by contacting them through e-mail or on behalf of some well-known sites (eBay, PayPal, Facebook, etc.), which would depend on the accounts the selected individuals already possess, with the short notice that their accounts will be terminated if they don’t follow the link provided in the mail (application). If you do that you’ll be redirected to a clone site, look alike to the trustworthy one and you’ll be asked to write down all your information (names, credit cards numbers, etc.) once again, or your account will be terminated. Looking at that message, we can simply choose to close the tab and never look back, or we can write the direct link to the questioned site in our browser and check out those harsh treats ourselves.
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.
