The Effects Of Identity Theft

Identity theft defined as the obtaining of one 's personal information in order to assume the identity of that person while making purchases or transactions (Investopedia). Identity theft can come in multiple forms from stealing credit card information to social security numbers. Identity fraud is more common than what many people believe, for instance, in the year of 2012 alone, sixteen million americans experienced identity theft in some form. During the weekend of Black Friday in 2013, a proposed target of 110 million shoppers may have had their credit card number, phone number and home addresses swiped. In October of 2013, J.P Morgan Chase came out telling all of their clients that their information may have been compromised which put 76 million households at risk. “You’re data is not 100 percent in your control.”Becky Frost, Senior manager of consumer education for Experian 's ProtectMyID (Danielle). …show more content…
A magnetic strip can be placed on credit card readers that strip away the data from the card, the thief will then go on to use that individual 's card without them knowing that anything had occurred at all. Some people may also go through an individual 's trash looking for any bills or bank records that may contain social security numbers. For example, I have all my old pay stubs in a secure location because they contained my social security number along with how much money that I had made up to that date. I definitely do not want people being able to access that data and it opens my eyes to see how easy it is to give someone your information by simply throwing away a piece of paper. Credit card hackers were able to hack a database that held credit card numbers and they accessed 1.4 million cards and information (Levy). Criminals can grab millions of people 's information in moments. Identity theft started off with people stealing purses, mail, and information, but now it is almost all