They steal our identity on the internet and activate a small loan, at our expense, that takes away little money a month on the account so we don’t realize it. Or they try the big shot and divert to their advantage a substantial bank transfer that concerns us. But they can also steal our identity on social networks to write in our name things that are very damaging to our reputation. For the hard drive data recovery service this is important now.

How to steal data

A far more widespread threat than the ordinary internet user can imagine because identity theft can now take place in so many ways, even without any fault on the part of the victim.

The great attacks of cyber criminals entering international servers are becoming more and more frequent of web services, hotels and so they stock up on users’ personal data. And these data breaches add to the more classic phishing or malware techniques used by criminals to steal data from users’ PCs or mobile phones.

Because identity theft occurs

Identity theft occurs mainly in two cases, according to experts.

• When someone uses the identity of another person to carry out an activity for which the consequences are to be applied to others e.g. consumer finance. In this case the attacker does not care who the victim is
• When someone uses another person’s identity to carry out actions on behalf of a specific person e.g. impersonate someone on a social network to give him statements.

If they steal personal and credit card information

The most frequent frauds involve the purchase of objects in installments with financing, the purchase of credit or telephone services, up to the opening of current accounts for the issuance of empty checks. All the data that allow the identity to be authentic are useful: for example if you provide a mobile number to the victim, any checks will be confirmed, and then the first phone calls after the missed payments will reach the victim, further delaying the detection of fraud. The bottom line is that online it is easy to trust unverified names and addresses.

If they steal mail access

And so far if we only steal generic personal data, not access passwords. Of course, things get worse if someone gets access to our inbox. The most common online fraud for companies is to monitor the correspondence between a company and a customer, and then, when there is a purchase order, to send the customer an e-mail in which they are told to pay on a another current account: having monitored the correspondence, the fraudster can refer to exact names, order number details, making the email particularly credible.

Most services, however, currently allow the password to be reset with a link sent via email, so by accessing the inbox, the password is needed, the address is not enough an attacker can have access to all of these services. Perhaps the victim will find that his password no longer works, but in almost all cases he will simply ask for a new reset to regain access.

If they steal the social identity

Naturally, identity theft is aimed at “making someone say” things. “Beyond account access, it takes little to create a fake profile for a person on a social network, especially if that person doesn’t use that social network.