Identity Theft is defined as unlawfully acquiring another’s means of Identification. It is much too prevalent in todays society and everyone needs to understand what it is and how to protect themselves. The term identity theft first appeared in the American language around 1996 and, its earliest reference pertains to a lobby of the US Federal Trade Commission that regulates the criminal abuse of a consumer’s “means of identification”. Consumers were more and more concerned with financial crimes that exploited their credit worthiness and, were used to commit loan fraud, mortgage fraud, lines-of-credit fraud and much more. A common thread that ran in most of these identity theft crimes was that lenders as well as vendors relied on shared use of highly centralized national credit-rating services and, combined with centralization of financial services, along with the emerging national retail outlets that did not require personally knowing their customers, helped criminals in devising new methods of defrauding consumers.
tags: forgery identity theft personal identification
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