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Identity Theft Is Usually an Unsophisticated Crime

Posted by Soulskill on from the skilled-in-refuse-investigation dept.

apatrick writes "A recent research report by Heith Copes (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and Lynne Vieraitis (University of Texas at Austin) has examined identity thieves and their methods. Copes and Vieraitis searched federal court records in the US for people convicted of identity theft and then tried to find out where they were serving their sentences. They were able to find 297 inmates, from which they sampled 59 inmates in 14 prisons across the country. The convicts agreed to do detailed interviews, in private, to talk about themselves and their crimes, and the results are reported in a recent issue of Criminal Justice Review. According to Copes and Vieraitis, 'it is best categorized as an economic crime committed by a wide range of people from diverse backgrounds through a variety of legitimate (e.g., mortgage broker) and illegitimate (e.g., burglar) occupations.' As to the issue of whether these are white-collar criminals, the authors say: 'Despite public perceptions of identity theft being a high-tech, computer driven crime, it is rather mundane and requires few technical skills. Identity thieves do not need to know how to hack into large, secure databases. They can simply dig through garbage or pay insiders for information. No particular group has a monopoly on the skills needed to be a capable identity thief.'"

4 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. These are just the ones being caught by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The sophisticated high tech criminals are not in prison. They're on a beach somewhere enjoying your money.

    1. Re:These are just the ones being caught by Jurily · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And the penalty for identity theft should be the same as the penalty for taking someone's life (because that's what the do, sort of), at least if it's done for criminal reasons.

      Taking life is penalized so harshly because it's irreversible.

    2. Re:These are just the ones being caught by gnick · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This sounds like my door-to-door survey which indicates that homelessness is a complete myth. Or my phone survey where I did a random sampling from the Yellow Pages and discovered that not a single person has so far given up their land-line.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  2. Re:The *real* flaw in the system is exposed by erroneus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is the effect of the system blaming the person whose identity was spoofed rather than blaming themselves or the system in general.

    It is a very bad system and punishes the innocent more than it punishes the guilty. The response you describe is exactly why and how this system fails. This system only benefits large government and large business. Why? Because they don't actually have to KNOW their customers to confirm their identities. They only have to know some numbers. Not only does this system serve to strip away human identity, it punishes completely innocent people quite often.

    The system either needs to be fixed or done away with. The harm outweighs the benefits.