Some identity thieves steal a name just to dodge an arrest
Not every identity thief wants your money. Some give a stolen name to police when they are arrested, so the charges land on someone else. The real person may only find out years later, through a court summons, a suspended licence at a routine traffic stop, or a failed background check for a job.
The phrase identity theft dates from 1964. Both British and American law treat it as the theft of personal identifying details such as names, birth dates, account numbers, signatures or fingerprints, used without permission for fraud or other crimes. Money is the most common motive, whether through loans, credit or goods obtained under another name. Tax fraud is a big category: a thief files a false return in someone's name and routes the refund to an account they control.
Clearing a criminal identity theft can be exhausting. Victims may have to track down the arresting officers, prove who they are with fingerprints or DNA, and appear in court. Police databases sometimes keep the innocent person's name as a permanent alias for the offender, and private data brokers may go on selling the wrong criminal history after official files are corrected. Medical identity theft, a term coined by privacy researcher Pam Dixon in a 2006 report, can plant a stranger's medical history in a victim's health files, where errors are hard to remove.
Children make especially attractive targets because their Social Security numbers carry no credit history, so misuse may go unnoticed for years. A study drawing on 40,000 children found that 10.2 percent had been affected. Young people in foster care are more exposed still, since their numbers pass between many agencies and relatives. Synthetic identity theft goes a step further, pairing a real number with an invented name and birthdate; the fake file mostly hurts lenders but can muddy a real person's credit.
A data breach does not automatically mean stolen identities. A United States government study found that most breaches had not led to detected identity theft, and victims often never learn how their details escaped. Malware such as Zeus, a hacking kit simple enough for novices, made theft of card numbers alarmingly easy around 2010.
Source: Identity theft
