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How Are Identity Thieves Operating to Get Your Identity and What Can They Do with It?

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How are identity thieves operating to get your identity and what can they do with it?

First it is important to know what identity theft is and then understand the way thieves manage to steal your identity. It’s a crime that happens when “someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person's personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain.” (Identity Theft, The United States Department of Justice), in other words: when someone uses other one’s identity to take advantage of it without any liability on his or her name. On the other hand there are various ways in which people can access to your valuable information, sometimes they are simple techniques and other times more sophisticated methods. The statistics on identity thefts, and also what is being done to prevent it, are two significant factors to be analyzed and see how secure we are now days.

Identity theft is not a recent phenomenon, it has been happening for a long time but not at the same level as now. In the 1930’s when alcohol was legalized again, underage people wanted to consume alcohol and created “fake ID’s” that we still see today. Of course this was not the only use for these fake documents. Later on the purpose of having a fake ID’s wasn’t just for buying alcohol, but also for creating other fake documents such as migratory documents (passports and residence permits). The immigration laws were the cause of innumerable people trying to fake documents so they could stay in the United States to work, or to go to work to the US. Now fake documents and stealing someone’s identity is much bigger than creating actual fake documents, it is not necessary to falsify actual documents to commit identity theft, thieves have taken advantage of the weaknesses there are in different systems like e-mail to use our personal data. Currently, the social security number is the

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