Technology: Victims Of Identity Theft

There are many types of computer crimes in which people came be a victim by the use of malware, phishing, social engineering, denial of service, and other used to commit identify theft, cyber stalking, fraud, and more. A popular computer crime these days is identify theft, in which an thief will use a person personal information to get money by opening credit cards and other types of accounts, may use health information to get medicines or medical equipment, or use the information for other malicious needs. The identify theft is a computer crime that victimizes a person and it can take years to recover. Today, society is more vulnerable to identity theft with the use of technology than before computers were as popular. There are ways to try …show more content…
According to Taylor (2011), identity theft is used to get a person personal information and use the information to allow the thief to pretend to be someone else, (p. 5). The victim of identity theft may not know it has happened until a few weeks or months later when the victim starts to get mails or phone calls about bill they did not agree …show more content…
It was harder for thieves to steal information about a person before the internet and networks were in place as they are today. To be able to steal a person identity, the thieves would have to go dumpster diving to steal mail with personal information on it. A theft may try to con a person out of information over the phone with social engineering. According to Easttom (2006), social engineering replies on human nature rather than technology to trick a user to offer up information needed to gain access to a system (p. 11). In some cases, the theft could be a friend or family that comes to the house all the time. Technology has changed a lot of the years and the internet has connected the world together which improved communication. However, this also makes it easier for thieves to use computers and internet to steal information needed for identity theft. A lot of personal information is stored in databases on servers of different companies such as credit card information in online stores or at retail stores in the city, health information in the doctor’s office or hospitals, and there are many other places personal information is stored on. Another location would be social media, people with public profiles may not realize the information they post can be used for identity theft. Even if a person does not store information on online stores or