Identify theft can be a miserable business, sometimes causing immeasurable personal disruption, damage to credit rating and months of reorganising financial accounts. As a security manager you are well placed to offer proactive advice to your company’s staff on how to protect against this fast growing crime. Good basic advice, which you can develop into an awareness campaign, can be found at the following sites:http://www.identity-theft.org.uk/protect-yourself.htm
http://www.vnunet.com/computeractive/features/2138242/identity-theft-facts
But the consequences of falling victim to ID theft may be worse than financial. What if someone steals your identify to access illegal paedophile services on the web? Moreover, ID theft is increasingly being used to finance terrorism. During a raid on the house of an Al-Qaeda associate in London in 2005, police discovered that stolen credit card details had been used to pay for internet sites to which had been posted jihadist training manuals, beheading videos and other inflammatory materials, including advice on how to hack sites.
Under new EU proposals setting up websites that encourage violence or explain how to make bombs will become a criminal offence, and the first port of call for the police is obviously going to be the owner of the credit card that paid for the site!
