IDENTITY THEFT- A PREVIEW – Identity Theft is the most common problem of every computer user nowadays. The situations which are the consequences of the identity thefts are even worse than they can be imagined to be. It can lead to loss of the personal data with even the loss of respect if this theft happens in a social networking website.
Definition of Identity Theft: The act of faking an identity. It is a form of a fraud where the thief or rather the potential hacker does his job by pretending to be someone else.
Purpose of Identity Theft: The chief goal which a hacker needs to achieve is gaining an access to someone else’s personal resources and stealing the information. In this, the hacker’s identity is usually concealed. The other purpose is to fake a person to use his personal assets like the credit card or bank balance, etc.
Different Online Identity Thefts: performing a theft online is much easier than off-line. Let us put a quick review on some of them.
- Keylogging: the hacker usually infects the Source’s computer with some malicious or non-malicious malwares which usually attaches to the Operating System and records the information such as keystrokes, web pages visited and others and sends them to the hacker.
- Hacking Large Data Bases: Gaining an access to the large Databases which usually hold the information of large number of people.
- Fake Job Offers: These job offers appear authentic but are rather fake which demand a filling of the on-line form with details sufficient enough to fake an identity.
- Temporary Files Browsing: the personal information of the user or rather the files stored is usually stored in the form of temporary files and cached copies on the computer system which is actually very difficult to access. Potential hackers infect the computers with malwares which steal this information and send back to them.
- Social Network Browsing: Everyone likes to give their full life history about themselves on the Social Networking Websites and this is the advantage for the potential hackers to steal the information either to use it or fake it.
- E-mail thefts: this is the act of hacking into the G-mail account for stealing personal information.
How to be away from this Identity Theft: The identity Theft is always present. We should be aware of it and becomes our responsibility to keep miles away from it. Let us see some ways:
- Removing the Traces: the traces of once presence should be removed from the internet such as cleaning temporary files, using Private Browsing mode on the browsers and deleting the sensitive data.
- Staying alert on the Social Networks: The social networking Profile should be kept a watch every day. Friend requests from unknown people should not be accepted and the privacy settings should be on which does not show the information to everyone and some personal questions should never be revealed or lest they can be used to break passwords.
- Using Temporary details: Details should not be used while fake information can be used in filling the information of some fake forms which are rather very disturbing. The SSN number and the e-mail address should never be entered.
- Secured Connections should be used: A secure Internet connection should be used and clicking on links should always be avoided.
Hope, this article has helped you a lot to know about Identity Theft.