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Taking a Look at Identity Theft

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“Identity Theft” is a term that frequently arises, however, countless times, most do not associate theft with technology based upon the internet. Identity theft rings have targeted consumer users, via online banking systems and different forms of social media to gather enough information on individual users to steal identities. These theft rings are rampant and widespread. Capturing and punishing these kind of criminals is time consuming and difficult at best. Unfortunately, even if you are not a frequent user of computers you are still vulnerable to having your identity stolen over the internet. Each of us has to equip ourselves to the best of our ability to prevent such theft from happening to us. What is identity theft? Federal laws define identity theft as “knowingly transferring, processing, or using, without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abeit, or in connection with, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of Federal law, or that constitutes a felony under any applicable State or local law” (18 U.S.C. 1028(a)(7) 2012). As of 2011, statistics have shown that identity theft had increased by 13%, with more than 11.6 million adults having their identity stolen, even though the dollar amounts stolen have remained consistent.
Cyber-criminals have many weapons in their arsenal from phishing to malware to hacking. Let’s take phishing for an example a concept of fooling a person into
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