It is no wonder that you should educate yourself on identity theft, as it has become so prevalent in the online realm. Not only that, but it has become a cinch for cyber-perpetrators to lift your existing identity and use it as their own. Quite a scary thought! This is the reality we live in today. Thankfully, however, there are things you can do to circumvent this.
Both the physical world and the digital world are susceptible to identity theft. Identity theft can have a domino effect in each of these scenarios, ruining lives in a variety of ways. In the case of the digital world, there may be even greater possibility for online crooks and cybercriminals in terms of making quick money to be obtained.
Attack surfaces and attack vectors, respectively, are terms used in IT jargon to describe the several ways that these kinds of crimes can manifest themselves and spread across various platforms. It’s crucial that you understand how online identity theft works and what you can do to best protect yourself from it. After all, so many of us have our identities scattered across the internet these days!
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What Is Identity Theft?
The number of cases of online identity theft in 2022 has been astounding. Naturally, there are more opportunities for criminals to gather data about us and then use it to their advantage as the number of people using the internet rises.
Because they can hide and cover their tracks far more successfully than they would be able to in real life, robbers and con artists find the online world to be extremely advantageous. Obfuscating (hiding your digital footprint) online is not that difficult, which is why many abuse this ability.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that identity theft was the most frequently reported complaint in 2021, with government documents as well as benefits fraud being the most common in this sector. Unfortunately, identity theft is huge in the United States. This type of identity theft was reported by almost 400,000 persons there alone. This number is in the hundreds of millions on a global basis, however.
Online identity theft grows simpler and more profitable for cybercriminals, especially since we haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic and millions of people continue to work or study from home (which may remain that way indefinitely).
Alas, cybercriminals are continuously inventing new ways to steal people’s identities online in order to avoid getting caught and to keep victims unaware of the crime. This makes it impossible for law enforcement to round up every cybercriminal group there is out there and stop identity theft altogether.
How About the Schemes Involved?
The documents and data of significant organizations and high-value targets are still stolen and fabricated in 2022, either for sale or some kind of impersonation (sometimes even silly pranks).
Additionally, stealing someone’s financial or medical information is a goldmine for criminals. For instance, identity fraud involving Medicare and Medicaid is on the rise. Scams and fraudulent plans employing stolen insurance information and driver’s licenses follow suit.
Account takeovers (ATOs), which are the direct outcome of identity theft on social media, are generating chaos there as well. In this year’s Instagram frauds, for instance, users’ accounts were hijacked and their followers were deceived. The same went for several other, highly-populous social media platforms like Facebook.
The most frequent victims of online identity theft include young people, frequent users of social media, wealthy individuals, and the elderly. Of course, the elderly are a favorite simply because they are unaware of what is happening and have not caught on.
There are several forms of online identity theft, such as;
- Financial
- Medical
- Personal information (PII) related
- Inheritance or estate
- Insurance
- Employment
- Tax
- Child identity
- Social media
More means exist to access accounts or simply gather account information for sale on criminal dark web forums, which is what the blackhat hacking community prefers, the more information there is available about a person online.
In order to create an account or impersonate someone, online crooks even find ways to practice synthetic identity theft, which involves fusing actual information about a user with false information. This is actually becoming more and more popular, as the opportunity to obfuscate one’s trail is that much greater.
At the end of the day, everyone needs to take a little extra care and attention to prevent online identity theft. This entails being as meticulous as you can with details such as bank statements and other transactions. There is simply no room for silliness there.
Remember that over 90% of identity theft cases are driven by human error. For instance, a user’s account was compromised because of a weak password or because of a phishing email that deceived the user into entering their credentials into a fake form. Sounds simple enough? Well, the simpler the scheme, the more favorable it is for criminals. Schemes can even be automated.
In other situations, criminals may physically search through someone’s trash in an effort to put together information, even observe people’s screens from behind them in public. What is more, crooks may physically steal mail envelopes that belong to someone. To be a crook is to have such a life.
Preventing Identity Theft
In other more likely cases of successful online identity crime, your internet traffic could be intercepted in Man in the Middle (MiTM) intercept attacks that compromise your router and home network. The use of public WiFi or unsecured WiFi to conduct sensitive transfers and logins may result in you being monitored and exploited by cyber crooks. The thing is, you would not even notice your credentials have been stolen or that your account was accessed.
For good identity theft prevention that will greatly minimize the risk of your personal details being used without your consent, check out the following list.
- Secure all of your online accounts with randomized passwords at least 10 characters long (use symbols and random letters/numbers). Do not repeat these passwords across multiple accounts. Store them only on paper and do not forget them!
- Never share personal information or credentials with anyone, especially over social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram
- Always check the sender address of an email as well as the URL it is coming from. You may find a suspicious domain in there that indicates it is a well-crafted scam email trying to scam you out of your credentials or bank account information
- Protect yourself from network interception by using cybersecurity software. This means using a premium VPN (Virtual Private Network) 24/7 and securing your home or business WiFi router the same way we mentioned earlier (i.e strong passwords)
