Are you sure who you’re dealing with ??
One increasing danger on the Internet is called Identity theft. What is it exactly ? Hackers are more and more trained to steal someones identity and the means to stop it are, for now, very little. It consists in faking someones (or a company’s) identity to steal money or to get very private information.
One of the most famous technique is to send fake emails, pretending you’re from a company and get through this some money or information that will help you to create some sort of “New identity”. Thanks to your credit card information, or your social security number, they pretend to be you on the web and do whatever they want ! Buy things, do illegal stuff, or get papers they can’t get, destroy your reputation !
As faking identity cards or social security cards was tough, and cost a lot of money to get it, this new form of crime is simple, cheap, and more and more people can do it ! Moreover, how it appears to be way harder to track someone on the web than finding someone who sells fake IDs.
The reasons are not even the good ones : real identity theft could be used sometimes to help an immigrant, or someone who’s in trouble, as cyber identity theft is most of the time a way to steal money.
That’s why you need to be careful when you pay something through the web ! Be sure the website is secure and famous, or you could get a phone call from bank asking why you spent 5000$ in Spain last week (that happened to a mother’s friend!)
You can find some tips here to protect against Identity theft …
