Cybercrime has come to be a definitive concern in modern life, impacting as many as 22% of businesses each twelve months as much of our lives inevitably move from the real world to the digital. Social connections, commerce, groceries and more are conducted in online spaces, using online banking and necessitating the presence of personal information on the internet.
Cybercrime has hence become simpler, more profitable and less risky for modern criminals – not to mention global in scope. Cybercrime is rife, from small-scale theft of social media accounts to large-scale ransomware hacks that impact vital public services – but there is one specific form of cybercrime that more directly poses risk to us as individuals: identity theft.
Understanding Identity Theft in the Digital Age
Identity theft, naturally, predates the internet by a considerable amount of time – describing, as it does, the use of another’s identity for nefarious purposes. In recent history, this might have meant entering a bank and assuming another’s identity in order to take out a loan; today, though, identity theft is at once simpler and more complex.
Our digital footprints are huge, even if we take active steps to minimise them. From social media presence to accounts with online shops and even your debit card usage patterns, there’s a vast volume of data on you, online. Identity thieves need only access this information to successfully steal your online identity – with potentially disastrous real-world impacts for you.
Protecting Your Personal Information Online
Protecting your personal information online, then, is paramount to ensuring you don’t fall victim to identity theft in the modern age. One of the more common methods of identity theft is via ‘phishing’, a form of cyber-scam wherein a fraudster contacts victims pretending to be a trustworthy or authoritative organisation; they might pretend to be a banking organisation, and ask you to verify your personal information to rectify a confected error.
As such, the simplest way to protect your personal information online is simply to not give it out, unless you are 100% sure that you are giving your information to a reputable website. No organisation will ask you to send sensitive information in the body of an email, nor will official correspondence be littered with poor spelling and grammatical errors.
If you’re concerned you have already been a victim of phishing, your first step should be to check your credit score – which, if unusually low, can demonstrate that loans have been taken out on your behalf. Whatever evidence for identity theft there may be, you should consult a legal professional for guidance on how best to proceed.
Securing Physical Documents and Offline Identity
Identity theft remains an offline threat just as much as an online one, though – and you should not lower your guard when it comes to identity theft scams conducted offline. Be wary of representatives for businesses and charities that approach you in the street, and do not agree to share information with businesses that you have not already reached out to yourself.
