Added: 22.01.2010 14:14
Linked challenges: (1)
Acer: Bank card security issues
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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. ‎

References:

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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