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Identity theft

Identity theft is the act of using someone else's personal information with the express intention of undertaking criminal acts using that data. The Home Office website on identity theft provides comprehensive information and advice about both protecting yourself and what you can do if your identity is stolen.

What are the potential consequences of giving away personal information? How big a digital footprint do you have, or how much information about you is freely available on the Internet? In other words, how easy do you make it for someone to steal your identity? Your personal information is a valuable commodity to both legitimate and criminal organisations.

Even if your PC is protected with up-to-date security software, updates and patches, there are still at least five common ways for criminals to gain access to and use your personal data:

  1. You freely give them the information they want, generally unwittingly via phishing
  2. You disclose too much information about yourself in chatrooms, forums, and so on
  3. Vulnerabilities in an unpatched browser can lead to infection of your PC through surfing infected websites
  4. Your computer or storage devices are stolen or lost
  5. You throw personal documents out without shredding them

There are both technological and common-sense elements to preventing your personal details from being stolen or used by criminals. Make it as difficult as possible for your identity to be stolen.

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