Personal Security free essay sample

The Importance of Safe Guarding Personal Information Identity theft is a serious problem worldwide. This crime flourishes when thieves are given access to your personal information, allowing them to commit crimes under your name or spend your money unbeknownst to you. You may be under the impression that identity theft could never happen to you. You may be careful with whom you give your Social Security number to, or diligent about changing up your passwords for the sake of safety. However, identity thieves are getting smarter about how they access your information. The statistics revolving around identity theft are disconcerting, but with a better understanding of how these crimes continue to be committed, we can help lower the rate of identity theft and prevent ourselves from becoming another statistic. 1. Odds Against You The United States Department of Justice states that in 2010, 7% of all United States households had at least one member of the family at or over the age of 12 who has been a victim of some sort of identity theft. That means the odds are greatly against you. Identity theft sets the government, American citizens, and businesses back by billions of dollars each year. From 2005 to 2010, 64. 1% of these instances involved credit card fraud, the fastest growing type of identity theft. Over the range of this time period, credit card misuse was doubled as the determining factor in identity theft. 2. Grave Robbing According to Time Magazine, 2. 5 million dead people get their identities stolen every year. Studies conducted by ID Analytics have shown that identity thieves have been applying for credit cards under the names of the deceased, opening up clean credit lines, new cell phone services, and in a staggering 1. million cases, using Social Security numbers previously belonging to dead people. This can be devastating for family members of the deceased who have been left to manage his or her estate. More than 2,000 identities of corpses per day are assumed by these fraudsters. 3. Social Media Fraud With a 13% increase in identity fraud between 2010 and 2011, a study conducted by Javelin Strategy amp; Research showed that consumers may be putting them selves at a higher risk for identity theft as a result of their increasingly intimate social media behaviors. Sixty-eight percent of people with public social media profiles on platforms such as Facebook or Twitter shared their birthday information with 45% of them getting into specifics about the exact month, day, and year. Sixty-three percent shared where exactly they attended high school. Eighteen percent shared their phone number and 12% shared their pet’s name. Not only are all of these details typically asked when verifying an identity, but people also frequently use them in passwords. The statistics are clear — people are giving away far too much personal information on social networking sites, allowing for fraudsters to easily steal their identities. 4. Medical Identity Theft According to the findings from a study conducted by the Federal Trade Commission, 19,428 complaints regarding medical identity theft have been reported to the Consumer Sentinel Database since January 1, 1992. Prior to that, medical-related identity theft was not documented, so there may have been many more instances of it that simply went unreported. Likewise, the number of medical identity theft victims rose from 1. % in 2001 to 1. 8% in 2005. Medical identity theft can be distressing to its victims, who often incur charges for medical care they didn’t even receive after their computerized medical records are stolen. A large chunk of these victims experienced raised premiums as a result of medical identity theft, with almost half losing coverage entirely. Medical identity thef t is more of an insider crime, as it is typically done by a health care professional. It may be committed by doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and others associated with the hospital. Part of the reason that medical identity theft is made possible could be because almost half of seniors carry their Social Security card or Medicare card in their wallets, which is a risky place to keep such valuable information. 5. College Students at Risk The United States Department of Education encourages college-aged students to be particularly aware of identity theft. After they conducted a recent survey, the Department of Education found that 48% of the students that participated in the survey admitted to leaving personal information out in their dorm rooms, some of which was financial in nature. Thirty-one percent of these students were burglarized or knew someone in the building who was burglarized, which means that their personal information could have been compromised. Identity thieves look to college-aged adults because they often have good, clean credit scores, making them an ideal target. On college campuses, Social Security numbers are often used for identification purposes. For example, a student may use their social to register for classes. With such easy access to your Social Security number, an identity thief has all the information they need to commit their crime. Lastly, college students are not as attentive to their banking accounts and private information, which buys the identity thief valuable time with your funds at hand. 6. Misleading Trial Offers The Consumer Federation of America works with commercial providers of identity theft services to figure out ways to keep people safe from identity theft. According to a 2012 report it released examining ways these services could be bettered, customers most commonly complained about the service’s lack of addressing misleading trial offers. Free trials are everywhere, offering a week or months’ worth of Weight Watchers, Netflix, or Proactiv face wash. However, customers complained that the identity theft protection sites themselves were unclear as to the trial offer stipulations. The problematic part is that customers often forget to cancel these temporarily â€Å"free† subscriptions, or they don’t realize they need to cancel, and then charges begin to accrue in their accounts from a service they may not even use. Customers feel this may as well be on par with the stealing that occurs via identity theft. So, even sites that help protect against identity theft may be draining your funds via an unclear trial offer scheme. 7. Cost to Victims According to the Federal Trade Commission’s 2006 Report, while 50% of all identity fraud victims accrue little to no out-of-pocket charges for the legal fees, lost wages, and false payments brought upon them during the fraud, a small bracket of 10% of all identity theft victims incur considerable out-of-pocket expenses. This can be upwards of $1,200. This is most commonly the case when fraudsters use a false identity to open new accounts. The top percentile of these victims lost as many as $3,000, an unsettling amount to personally lose as a result of identity theft. Few things leave a person feeling more vulnerable and taken advantage of. Likewise, resolving identity theft crime isn’t easy. Ten percent of all victims spend 55 or more hours sorting out their problems, while the top 5% spend at least 130 hours. 8. Child Identity Theft Since children have perfectly clean backgrounds, no real credit score to speak of, and their parents don’t think to monitor the status of their identity, they make easy targets for identity theft. The main reasons fraudsters use child identities is to administer illegal immigration, steal, and wipe clean the credit scores of a loved one by utilizing that of a child in their place. Sadly, this can have negative effects on the child’s credit down the line, and they could have trouble securing student loans, getting a decent job, or even purchasing a cellphone. In a study conducted by Carnegie Melon’s CyLab, 10. 2% of the children reported that someone else had used their Social Security number fraudulently. The worst of these accounts was toward a 16-year-old girl who had reported fraudulent charges of $725,000 under her name. 9. Police Notification According to the Consumer Sentinel Network’s 2011 report, 57% of identity theft victims notified a police department, resulting in a police report. Six percent notified a police department, but did not have a police report filed, and 7% notified the police but were unsure as to whether a report was filed. This leaves an alarming 30% of victims who didn’t bother to notify the police at all. In order to get ahold of the problem of identity theft, victims need to be proactive about stopping thieves with police intervention. Otherwise, the crime will perpetuate, as it is easy to get away with and can strongly benefit the thief. Title: How IASO has Failed to Protect Personal Identifiable Information? When it comes to protecting private information, no one wants to feel exposed. The most precious information a person may ever possess is their personal identifiable information: a Social Security Number, address, date of birth and even a name. If this information is stolen or tampered with, it may never be restored. Personal identifiable information, or PII as it is commonly known, has been strictly protected for years by lengthy information security regulations. Information security, or IS, works to inspect, maintain, record or destroy information while guarding it against unauthorized access, use or alteration. Most often, this type of security refers to computer-based security, simply because most precious information is now recorded on these electronic systems. The question is: is your information really being protected? Unfortunately, your PII might not be under lock and key. There are several issues with IS, many of which revolve around people – the ones both protecting and sabotaging your information. Out of all the issues plaguing IS, these are the most dangerous: * Ignorance. Computer security threats most often occur when computers are hacked or infected through sites, files and other media found through the internet. Employees and individuals that are uneducated in smart internet searching and threat recognition are more likely to invite hackers, infections and identity thieves into their databases. These days, many employees receive very little training on protection against internet dangers, which can result in serious consequences. * Covering, not solving. When problems are encountered in a system, many individuals focus on finding the infection so that it can be destroyed. Other avenues include wiping the computer altogether to rid it of the virus. However, neither of these methods takes away the source of the problem; if there is a site that is causing the problem, it should be avoided; if there is something else causing the disturbance, it should be discovered, reported and destroyed. Too often the focus is on fixing the immediate problem instead of devising a permanent solution. * Personal irresponsible action. PII is often disclosed through more simple means than computer hacking; many times, information security problems come directly from people. Individuals that place important information on sites, communicate information over internet messaging, or even disclose private information in the everyday world are at higher risk of security threats. Theft of computers, hard drives and flash drives also occurs frequently in unwatchful workplaces. All of these issues make IS less effective, and should be taken into serious consideration when any government organization, company or individual is seeking to protect precious personal identifiable information. Identity Theft Victim Statistics| Approximately 15 million United States residents have their identities used fraudulently each year with financial losses totalling upwards of $50 billion. * On a case-by-case basis, that means approximately 7% of all adults have their identities misused with each instance resulting in approximately $3,500 in losses. Close to 100 million additional Americans have their personal identifying information placed at risk of identity theft each year when records maintained in government and corporate databases are lost or stolen. These alarming statistics demonstrate identity theft may be the most frequent, costly and pervasive crime in the United States. The sophistication level of professional identity thieves involved in organized crime continues to grow along with the methods they develop. From individually tailored phishing and vishing scams, to increasingly successful hacks of corporate and government databases, to elaborate networks of botnets designed to hijack millions of computers without any trace, there is an ever-increasing threat to all Americans. At the same time, basic methods of identity theft continue unabated. From stealing wallets and purses, to dumpster diving and stealing mail, to the use of pretext and social engineering to deceive customer call centers into releasing personal account information, the original methods of identity theft still work. As the methods used to perform identity theft expand, so do the types of accounts and services being stolen by identity thieves. Credit, debit, checking and saving accounts are no longer the only targets. Identity fraud has grown to include theft of cell and landline phone service; cable and satellite television service; power, water, gas and electric service; Internet payment service; medical insurance; home mortgages and rental housing; automobile, boat and other forms of financing and loans; and, government benefits. Identity thieves will also use stolen identities to obtain employment and to deceive police when arrested. Quite simply, every individual or business is vulnerable to attack when it comes to personal or corporate information, products and services. *Based on a range of information gathered from public and private resources. | | Techniques for obtaining and exploiting personal information for identity theft Identity thieves typically obtain and exploit personally identifiable information about individuals, or various credentials they use to authenticate themselves, in order to impersonate them. The statute now makes the possession of any means of identification to knowingly transfer, possess, or use without lawful authority a federal crime, alongside unlawful possession of identification documents. However, for federal jurisdiction to prosecute, the crime must include an identification document that either: (a) is purportedly issued by the United States, (b) is used or intended to defraud the United States, (c) is sent through the mail, or (d) is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce. See 18 U. S. C.  §Ã‚  1028(c). Punishment can be up to 5, 15, 20, or 30 years in federal prison, plus fines, depending on the underlying crime per 18 U. S. C.  §Ã‚  1028(b). In addition, punishments for the unlawful use of a means of identification were strengthened in  § 1028A (Aggravated Identity Theft), allowing for a consecutive sentence under specific enumerated felony violations as defined in  § 1028A(c)(1) through (11). The Act also provides the Federal Trade Commission with authority to track the number of incidents and the dollar value of losses. Their figures relate mainly to consumer financial crimes and not the broader range of all identification-based crimes. [35] If charges are brought by state or local law enforcement agencies, different penalties apply depending on the state. Six Federal agencies conducted a joint task force to increase the ability to detect identity theft. Their joint recommendation on red flag guidelines is a set of requirements on financial institutions and other entities which furnish credit data to credit reporting services to develop written plans for detecting identity theft. The FTC has determined that most medical practices are considered creditors and are subject to requirements to develop a plan to prevent and respond to patient identity theft. [36] These plans must be adopted by each organizations Board of Directors and monitored by senior executives. [37] Identity theft complaints as a percentage of all fraud complaints decreased from 2004-2006. [38] The Federal Trade Commission reported that fraud complaints in general were growing faster than ID theft complaints. [38] The indings were similar in two other FTC studies done in 2003 and 2005. In 2003, 4. 6 percent of the US population said they were a victim of ID theft. In 2005, that number had dropped to 3. 7 percent of the population. [39][40] The Commissions 2003 estimat e was that identity theft accounted for some $52. 6 billion of losses in the preceding year alone and affected more than 9. 91 million Americans;[41] the figure comprises $47. 6 billion lost by businesses and $5 billion lost by consumers. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a report released in 2007 revealed that 8. 3 million American adults, or 3. 7 percent of all American adults, were victims of identity theft in 2005. 42] The latest report from the FTC showed that ID theft increased by 21% in 2008. However, credit card fraud, that crime which is most closely associated with the crime of ID theft, has been declining as a percentage of all ID theft. In 2002, 41% of all ID theft complaints involved a credit card. That percentage has dropped to 21% in 2008. [43] Two states, California[44] and Wisconsin[45] have created an Office of Privacy Protection to assist their citizens in avoiding and recovering from identity theft. In Massachusetts in 2009-2010, Governor Deval Pat rick made a commitment to balance consumer protection with the needs of small business owners. His Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation announced certain adjustments to Massachusetts identity theft regulations that maintain protections and also allows flexibility in compliance. These updated regulations went into effect on March 1, 2010. The regulations are clear that their approach to data security is a risk-based approach important to small businesses and might not handle a lot of personal information about customers. [46][47] The IRS has created the IRS Identity Protection Specialized Unit to help taxpayers who are victims of federal tax-related identity theft. Generally, the identity thief will use a stolen SSN to file a forged tax return and attempt to get a fraudulent refund early in the filing season. A taxpayer will need to fill out Form 14039, Identity Theft Affidavit.