5. Theft of Identity

This sounds very odd at first! - how can someone steal who you are?

Well, think about it. How do you prove who you are? - if you are in the same room you can produce some official documents such as passport, birth certificate, gas bill, driving licence.

And if you are doing business over the phone or the Internet, they may ask you for some personal details that you have already shared with them - Pet's name, Mother maiden name, your ISP, favourite football team and so on.

So the things that proves who you are is 'data'. All kinds of data.

Someone who has suffered "Identity theft" means that this data has been stolen and is now being used to impersonate them. ( A recent article - from "Which" magazine said that a quarter of UK citizens had either suffered ID theft or they personally knew of someone who had fallen victim).

Suddenly bills start turning up for things that they never bought - holidays, new credit cards, hotel bills, car loans, direct debits from their bank account. It is seriously bad news!.

How is personal information gathered ? - "Phishing"

Personal data is gathered by tricking you into giving it away. A very common way of doing this is to send an email that pretends to be something urgent for example

From: Bank XXX - Your account is showing unusual use - please contact us urgently click here.

This is called 'phishing' - an email that is trying to trick you into clicking the link provided. It will most likely take you to a web site that looks exactly like the real thing. You fill out the form asking about your personal details and the scam is complete.

Do not click on links in any email - type the real address of the company into your browser.

How to avoid ID theft

In a few words - you can't stop it. However there are sensible things you could do to make it harder that include:

• Do not give away innocent information such as mother's maiden name unless you trust the business
• Only give as much information as required and no more. For example, if a site has a form asking for all kinds of information only give what is the absolute minimum. For example an online shop selling clothes does not need to know your exact date of birth - just "17" should be good enough.
• Avoid Phishing efforts - Rather than following a link in an e-mail, open a browser and go to the site of the retailer or bank in question.
• When submitting personal information like credit card numbers, make sure you are using a secure connection by looking for "https://" in front of the site's location on your browser rather than "http://." And look for the little padlock in the status bar.