A Brief Look At Identity Theft

Have you had your identity stolen and found that some unknown person(s) is pretending that they are you? Have the individuals who used your personal identifying information without your consent or knowledge, been able to steal your money or benefit monetarily in some other ways? If so, then you are among the ever-growing numbers of victims whose identities are stolen every day.

Even though the term identity theft suggests that your identity has been stolen, in truth it is not possible to actually "steal" a person's identity--although it is possible to make illegal use of it. When somebody misuses another person's identity, it can cause that other person to suffer serious financial loss, a compromised credit rating, and even a damaged reputation. Even worse, it can land them in serious legal trouble, as they could be held accountable for criminal acts committed in their names by the identity thieves.

There are several different kinds of identity theft, including theft of business and/or commercial information, criminal I.D.theft, financial theft of identity, cloning of identity and even medical identity theft.

One should take care to distinguish identity theft from identity fraud. Even though people tend to think of both as being one and the same, in reality, identity fraud is the consequence of identity theft, and is therefore not the actual theft of identity. This means that even though someone may steal a person's I.D.information, identity fraud is not actually committed if the information is not used.

The main purpose for stealing an identity is to commit crimes and fraudulent acts of all sorts. Examples include using stolen identities to provide phony identification documents for employment of illegal aliens, committing acts of domestic terrorism, and carrying out political and industrial espionage.

Perhaps one of the most damaging forms of identity theft is the act of identity cloning to attack payment-processing systems such as those used to for processing credit cards and medical insurance claims. To commit such a form of I.D theft the thief must be able to obtain the victim's personal data or documents, which the imposter can use to impersonate that person and commit fraud.

A fictional case of such theft was popularized in the book "The Day of the Jackal" in which a person trying to assassinate French President Charles De Gaulle steals three different identities. In real life, two of the most famous modern day identity thieves are Radovan Karadzic, former president of the Bosnian Serb republic, and Michael Sabo who used over 100 fake identities in his career of forging checks, and stock and bond certificates.