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Idenity Theft

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Identity theft is the biggest crime in the world today. For over ten years, identity theft (in all forms) has been the number one consumer complaint. In 2012 identity, theft affected more than 16.6 million Americans alone. With the 16.6 million people affected, there was a financial loss of 21 billion dollars. That number only went up in 2013 to 24.7 billion dollars and so far, for 2014 we beat that number by over one billion dollars. Finklea, Kristin 2014) With this growing epidemic, we need to educate ourselves on what identity theft is, how it affects us and how to protect ourselves in this new cyber world.
Types of Identity Theft It may surprise people to know that there are many different types of identity theft. The most common and often the first thing people think of when they hear identity theft is financial identity theft. This is when a person’s credit cards and/or bank accounts are accessed and used without the owner’s permission or knowledge. The thief can do this by withdrawing money from the victims back account or by maxing out their credit cards. Another way a criminal could commit financial identity theft is by opening new accounts in the victim’s name; such as credit card and even loans. This type of financial identity theft could take the victim years and thousands of dollars to correct. One of the first cases that received the attention of national headlines of financial identity theft was from 1992.
In one notorious case of identity theft, the criminal, a convicted felon, not only incurred more than $100,000 of credit card debt, obtained a federal home loan, and bought homes, motorcycles, and handguns in the victim's name, but called his victim to taunt him -- saying that he could continue to pose as the victim for as long as he wanted because identity theft was not a federal crime at that time -- before filing for bankruptcy,

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