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Identity Theft : Targeting Towards College Students

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Running head: IDENTITY THEFT 1

Identity Theft:
Targeted Towards College Students
Lawren Linehan
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

IDENTITY THEFT 2
Abstract
Identity theft is a prevalent issue in society, especially amongst college students. College students are often considered easy targets because of their lack of knowledge on the issue, risky behavior, and excessive use of social media and the Internet. There are multiple ways that identity theft can occur. The average citizen doesn’t easily recognize some of these ways. This white-collar crime is extremely common and affects a large number of people each year. Education on this topic can help college students recognize the …show more content…

1). College students are at an increased risk of identity theft because our educational system fails to teach personal finance. Collegians participate in risky transactions, are carefree with their personal information, are uneducated about how identity theft occurs, and know little about its ramifications.
How Identity Theft Happens Stealing an identity is becoming increasingly easy due to technological advancements, but this crime does still happen using traditional methods. People don’t even think about identity theft until it’s usually too late. With the proper education, most ID theft cases can be prevented, but the methods of how it occurs need to be understood first. Personal information is frequently obtained from social media sites and online purchases. A study done by the University of Missouri-Columbia concluded that almost 30% of college students can’t identify a secure website (Norum & Weagley, 2006, p. 54). For presumably being the most tech savvy generation, that statistic is shockingly high. Not being able to recognize a secure site from an unsecure one increases the risk of having credit card numbers, names, and addresses stolen while making online transactions.

IDENTITY THEFT 4 Phishing is another common form of theft. Phishing is when someone uses a technique such as keystroke logging or fake

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