Identity theft

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Abstract
Almost every week I hear a news report or read a newspaper article about identity theft. It will either be about yet another person who suffers at the hands of the identity thief, some new software or hardware breakthrough that will foil the activities of the identity thieves, or, a new report or study telling us the cost of identity theft to business. Six men have been jailed after a £345 000 plot to defraud banks by obtaining fake identities over the Internet, said a recent BBC News report. The men used house auction websites to find out the details of people who had died. With the information, they forged documents to open bank accounts and receive loans from Lloyds TSB and the Halifax and Co-operative banks. The men were jailed for between 18 months and four-and-a-half years. 1 According to the Federal Trade Commission Identity Theft Data Clearinghouse 215 000 people had their identities stolen in 2003, up from 162 000 in 2002. A third of the thefts were used to perpetrate credit-card fraud, while 21% were used for phone or utilities fraud.

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