ID Theft Less Likely to Happen on the Internet
When you hear the term “identity theft,” what comes to mind? For most people it conjures up images of some shifty-eyed hacker sitting in front of a computer screen, tapping away at the keyboard and into your personal information. It might come as a surprise that identity thieves– typically young and working alone– use the Internet for less than one fifth of their crimes according to a recent study. It has also been found that “insider” employees accounted for only one third of identity thefts. Identity theft can be as simple as taking someone’s mail.
These findings, which differ from previous ones in that they focus on the criminal and his or her methodology rather than the victim, set it apart from other studies. Up until now identity thieves were far more difficult to classify than other criminals, but these new findings might help the Identity Theft Task Force– which deals with roughly three million cases each year– in its efforts to categorize the group.
Characteristics of Identity Thieves
In the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection’s (CIMIP) study they found that eighteen percent of identity thieves were between the ages of 18 and 24, and over forty-two percent were between 25 and 34. Two-thirds of the total offenses were committed by males. What’s more, nearly one fourth were born outside of the U.S. The report also found that about eighty percent of identity thefts were perpetrated by criminals working unaccompanied.
Out of the 517 cases studied, only a third were committed by employee insiders; and two out of five of these involved the retail sector, which included restaurants, stores, doctors, hospitals, gas stations, casinos and car dealerships. In a fifth of all cases the employee worked in a financial service capacity.
Furthermore, seventy-five percent of identity thieves used the information to obtain cash. Twenty-two percent used the information to also hide their own identity and another twenty percent used it to acquire a car loan. The majority of offenders stole bits and pieces of personal identification rather than a driver’s license or credit card.
Less than twenty percent of identity thefts involved the internet. Other methods involved change-of-address fraud, mail theft and dumpster diving. In short, the homeless-looking person wallowing in your trash is about as great a threat as that rebellious technological genius clicking away at his or her computer.
