No linked visions.
an increase in identity theft and fraud
internet has many advantages such as online banking,money transfer,loan applications etc. but do advantages outweigh its disadvantages?
imagine being in a situation whereby a person you don’t know and never seen before initially takes over your bank account and withdraws money at will, use your credit card, obtains huge loans, buys many things online in your name on credit and finally calls you to taunt that he can continue pretending to be you for as long as he wants, or in another situation whereby one of your company’s administrative personnel rips off a dozen pages of paper from the company containing you and your fellow employees personal information and gives them to a third party who uses that information to open up many fraudulent accounts, signs many deals leaving you and other employees with credit card nightmares.
this is called identity theft and “identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person\'s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain.” (www.justice.gov )this and many other identical cases have happened and continue to happen to many people whereby innocent victims on many occasions report to the authorities that someone has taken funds out of their bank accounts or taken over their identities altogether and use it to take loans etc and committing many crimes in the victim’s name.
currently there is no exact global statistical figure as to how much money has been defrauded from people worldwide but a rough estimation is around several hundreds of billions of dollars yearly not mentioning unreported cases were victims feel embarrassed to report the crime.
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/websites/idtheft.html
http://www.watchtower.org/e/20040722/article_01.htm
jessica fargen. news. mcclatchy - tribune business news. washington: jan 10, 2010.
Research question: how can you protect yourself from identity theft?
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