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Identity Theft Is Usually an Unsophisticated Crime
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.'"
news at 11
The sophisticated high tech criminals are not in prison. They're on a beach somewhere enjoying your money.
This is a self selected sample of people who were stupid enough to get caught. The sophisticated ones generally don't get caught, or at least not so quickly.
I remember several times I have listened to the radio talk show host Clark Howard and heard him say that most ID theft that goes on is a case of someone's paper checkbook being stolen. The implication was that it's a bad idea to carry one around unless you really need to and that a good place to store it at home would be in a safe or other secure location so burglars could not easily obtain it. That would be consistent with what this article is claiming, that mostly it's a low-tech crime involving a compromise of physical security, not digital.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
i have a store credit card that my wife uses once every few months to buy something. usually baby clothes. a lot of times the card is in the drawer and she would just go the store and tell them my name and they would find the card in the system and ring up the sale. now she says they want to know identifying information like driver's license expiration date, SSN, birthday, etc. she asked about this and they said that they were losing too much money to ID theft.
back in 2006 and 2007 no one cared since business was good. when a recession hits you start to look at every penny you can save
Being a successful identity thief, however, is a different story, I believe. Measuring that success by remaining uncaught. It's ridiculous how much of the information necessary to "steal" someone's identity is easily available, without needing to dig very deep. The hardest part would be SS#, but even then it's not that hard to get, considering how often someone asks for mine, and refuses to take anything else.Having lost my entire wallet once, I called the 3 credit monitoring groups and put a fraud watch on it, or whatever it is they called it, and I really think it should be standard. It requires that they contact you personally to verify any new openings of credit cards.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
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.
No, but that's like saying theft is a mundane crime that requires few technical skills. You'd be right -- the majority of those caught are unsophisticated and generally of low intelligence. The only other common traits is that they're generally desperate and were presented with an opportunity. But if they are organized and sophisticated, like say the mafia, or botnet authors -- those very few people who have refined their skills and moved beyond immediate opportunity and are refining their methodology are capable of far, far, more. And the police are ill-equipped to deal with this sophistication because most people who reach that level of competency have researched police investigation methods -- by trolling the same public records this report did and figured out what the common pitfalls are.
Professional criminals may make up a minority per capita, but their "take" is orders of magnitude higher, and risk exposure orders of magnitude lower.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I know this is probably something most people have looked down upon, but my friends and I used to dumpster dive at hardware distributors in my area just about every weekend. I got things like tower cases, empty raid chassis, piles of working hard drives, decent office supplies, etc. If not ordained, you'd be amazed at how 'clean' most computer company's dumpsters are. No food waste, diapers, or other grizzly things. Just cardboard boxes, all the anti-static bags you could ever want and the occasional soda can.
We all grew older, made more money and cut out the practice, but I was wondering if any of you currently do this? We would often run into police officers since they are curious about people in a business complex at 12am, but were often friendly and left us to our task. Is this still how it goes? I'd imagine with identity theft, coppers may be a little more agressive with people digging through the garbage.
This entire identity database system, usually based on one or two numeric identifiers, makes tracking people easier. It means larger and larger businesses can exist with larger and larger customers paying them larger and larger amounts of money with a great deal less overhead. The problem is that these relatively simple information "keys" are was is being exploited by identity fraudsters.
I refuse to call it identity theft -- the identity isn't being stolen and the name seeks to imply that the victim is the person whose numeric identifiers are being used to commit fraud against commercial activities. The commercial activities aim to place the burden of the problem onto individuals whose identities are being spoofed instead of accepting the blame for trusting fraudsters too easily. The requirements for proof of identity are too low and it is by no means the fault of the people who have these systems forced upon them. It is the fault of the lenders and other business and government entities who have all adopted this ridiculously simple and vulnerable form of identity verification.
There was a time when a person had to actually SIGN a document or contract to be held liable for a debt or obligation. These days, the requirements are much more trivial and the requirement of evidence is a great deal lower. Now the burden of proof is largely on the people who are literally innocent of any wrong doing while the burden of proof from the victims or plaintiffs (the commercial activities) is really quite low.
The system is VERY weak and VERY exploitable and the people who are most interested in keeping the system going (government and commercial activities) prefer to shift the blame and burden of damages on to innocent parties rather than themselves. "I'm sorry sir, someone has pretended to be you and now your assets are frozen until we can sort this mess out." How is that right, fair or reasonable? The "system" is forced upon us all and so we have little choice or ability to "protect" ourselves. All of the data that is misappropriated usually comes from government and business databases and no so much from the person's own negligence (though I recognize that some is) but the fact is that people cannot "protect" their information when they have to share it with so many strangers so often... strangers who have little if any obligation to safeguard the information and when they do have an obligation to safeguard, often fail with no punishment at all.
In short, the government issues you a number whether or not you use it and it is somehow YOUR problem if someone else were to learn that number and use it to steal from someone else.
Now I know why bank robbers on TV have been known to use Richard Nixon masks when robbing banks! They are not held accountable while Nixon is blamed for the crime.
Anyone who thinks ID theft and the mechanisms used to achieve it are unsophisticated, badly needs to read this (700K PDF). Badly.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"