Identity Theft
“Sister Used Credit Card and Her Name for Committing Crimes,”[1] “Identity Theft Victim's House has Loans Against It, Rented out to Tenants,”[2] “Victim of Identity Theft Being Hounded for Back Taxes, Under Suspicion of U.S. Customs Dept.”[3] This kind news have came out more and more frequently since people started to use a new method to purchase things -- Online shopping. Online shopping is the process consumers go through to purchase products or services over the Internet. For example, an online shop, eshop, e-store, internet shop, webshop, webstore, online store, or virtual store, all of them provide a lot of kind of products for people online. People only need to sit in front of their computer and move the mouse in their homes. They can buy almost anything they want. However, nothing is perfect. Purchasing things on internet, people have to risk a danger-- identity theft.
Identity theft is criminal behavior, meaning an imposter uses other person’s name, I.D. number, date of birth, phone number, address, or anything that can make the person unique, even the person’s favorite color, to do something like purchasing, renting, selling, opening account or even committing a crime. Actually, identity theft had taken place before people started to use the Internet, and this crime has become aggravated because of the growth of online shopping. When people purchase products on the Internet, they need to fill their personal information along with at least the credit card number on certain sheet.
Although the online store usually attempts to use specific computer programs for security, hackers can break the line of defense and steal whatever information they want. No matter if the hackers use this personal information by themselves or sell it to other people, the victims face very serious consequences. The worse thing is that the victim usually unaware their identity has been stolen until they discover their loss or receives the summons. According to statistics, the number of US adult victims of identity theft was 8.4 million in 2007, and their total loss was $49.3 billion.[4] The number represents a huge black hole behind convenience of online shopping. People do need to know how to use one stone to kill two birds, getting all benefits of online shopping and averting the danger of it.
Even though most countries have built systems to help the victims to recover their loss back then do not usually work very well. Therefore, the best policy is protecting ourselves when we purchase productions online. We can take some steps such as the following. First of all, use a strong password. Many people use their phone number or date of birth as password, and it is very danger. A strong password must be created by more complex thinking. Second, do not follow the links you do not know where they go. In fact, “the truly dangerous thing about online shopping has absolutely nothing to with your own computer.”[5] Hackers usually implant viruses into websites. When people connect to these poisoned websites, they download the virus automatically. And then, the personal information will be concealed either by publishing on the Internet or sending it to the hackers. Third, since hackers very often create viruses, what we should do is to renew our anti-virus program version frequently. These are three rudimentary and most important steps to prevent damage from identity theft.
In summary, we need to learn the dark side of online shopping. We admit that to purchase productions on the internet is a revolution of business, and it has a lot of advantages like convenience, saving time, lower prices and so on. If we are oblivious to our traps on the internet and do not take some methods to protect ourselves, however, suffering the consequences will be very critical. Therefore, take the suggestions and your information will be safe. (647)
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