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Every person in modern society has an identity, a building block that is fundamental to social function. This identity affords the individual with an array of related benefits and abilities. For example, consequential pieces of information and documents such as a social security number or a passport provide a person with the means to extend her or his identity in a host of directions. This information, unique to a particular individual, is known as personally identifiable information or PII (Guffin, 2011). Illegal use of PII is often the result of identity theft, which can be defined as “the use of a person's personally identifying information--a name, social security number, credit card number or other financial information--without permission, to commit fraud, theft or other crimes.” (Morton, 2014). Identity theft consists of a multifaceted and evolving set of frauds, ranging in scope from those that are simple to others that are increasingly complex and sophisticated. Partly due to the rapid growth of the Internet and widespread use of mobile devices and social media, identity theft has become the fastest growing crime in the United States (USPIS, 2017). According to the United States Postal Inspection Service, the identities of 16.7 million people in the United States were stolen in 2017. Personal and financial data was lost. The most recent survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 2016 an estimated 10% of people age 16 or older had been victims of identity theft during the prior 12 months (Harrell, 2019). The same study also found that total losses across all incidents of identity theft amounted to $17.5 billion in 2016, and that nearly 20% of people age 16 or older had experienced identity theft in their lifetime. The phenomenon is not limited to the United States; a report from the United Kingdom showed a 31% increase in the crime from 2014 to 2015 with 80% of it conducted online (Bradbury, 2015). Convenience of availability of information has provided new attack vectors for identity thieves to exploit.
As identity theft evolves, it has expanded its tentacles into an ever-greater number of crimes (United States General Accounting Office, 2002). Identity thieves continue to exploit vulnerabilities in a wide range of directions so that they can steal valuable resources. For this reason, identity theft crimes can involve an intricate inter-related web of fraud that includes mail, email, financial services, insurance, phone scams, online shopping, social media, tax exploitation and healthcare manipulation. Multiple oversight and jurisdictions often must collaborate in order to unravel these crimes. For example, the United States Treasury Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Postal Service may work on a single case. The maze of deception is challenging to sort through and equally difficult to prevent.
In order to develop a strategy to help combat identity theft, it is imperative to understand issues related to the crime. To this end, several fundamental areas will be examined that include a closer look at the perpetrators; targets who are vulnerable; methods employed to execute identity fraud; and existing countermeasures developed to fight the crime.