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Identity theft

About: Identity theft is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2284 publications have been published within this topic receiving 31700 citations.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It can be argued that well-designed end-user security education contributes to thwart phishing threats, as the interaction effect of conceptual and procedural knowledge positively impacts on computer users' self-efficacy, which enhances their phishing threat avoidance behaviour.

257 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This essay is an initial attempt to explore the feeling of security: where it comes from, how it works, and why it diverges from the reality of security.
Abstract: Security is both a feeling and a reality. And they’re not the same. The reality of security is mathematical, based on the probability of different risks and the effectiveness of different countermeasures. We can calculate how secure your home is from burglary, based on such factors as the crime rate in the neighborhood you live in and your door-locking habits. We can calculate how likely it is for you to be murdered, either on the streets by a stranger or in your home by a family member. Or how likely you are to be the victim of identity theft. Given a large enough set of statistics on criminal acts, it’s not even hard; insurance companies do it all the time. We can also calculate how much more secure a burglar alarm will make your home, or how well a credit freeze will protect you from identity theft. Again, given enough data, it’s easy. But security is also a feeling, based not on probabilities and mathematical calculations, but on your psychological reactions to both risks and countermeasures. You might feel terribly afraid of terrorism, or you might feel like it’s not something worth worrying about. You might feel safer when you see people taking their shoes off at airport metal detectors, or you might not. You might feel that you’re at high risk of burglary, medium risk of murder, and low risk of identity theft. And your neighbor, in the exact same situation, might feel that he’s at high risk of identity theft, medium risk of burglary, and low risk of murder. Or, more generally, you can be secure even though you don’t feel secure. And you can feel secure even though you’re not. The feeling and reality of security are certainly related to each other, but they’re just as certainly not the same as each other. We’d probably be better off if we had two different words for them. This essay is my initial attempt to explore the feeling of security: where it comes from, how it works, and why it diverges from the reality of security. Four fields of research—two very closely related—can help illuminate this issue. The first is behavioral economics, sometimes called behavioral finance. Behavioral economics looks at human biases—emotional, social, and cognitive— and how they affect economic decisions. The second is the psychology of decisionmaking, and more specifically bounded rationality, which examines how we make decisions. Neither is directly related to security, but both look at the concept of risk: behavioral economics more in relation to economic risk, and the psychology of decision-making more generally in terms of security risks. But both fields go a long way to explain the divergence between the feeling and the reality of security and, more importantly, where that divergence comes from.

236 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a thorough review of the different security and privacy risks, which threaten the well-being of OSN users in general, and children in particular, and present an overview of existing solutions that can provide better protection, security, and privacy for OSNs users.
Abstract: Many online social network (OSN) users are unaware of the numerous security risks that exist in these networks, including privacy violations, identity theft, and sexual harassment, just to name a few. According to recent studies, OSN users readily expose personal and private details about themselves, such as relationship status, date of birth, school name, email address, phone number, and even home address. This information, if put into the wrong hands, can be used to harm users both in the virtual world and in the real world. These risks become even more severe when the users are children. In this paper, we present a thorough review of the different security and privacy risks, which threaten the well-being of OSN users in general, and children in particular. In addition, we present an overview of existing solutions that can provide better protection, security, and privacy for OSN users. We also offer simple-to-implement recommendations for OSN users, which can improve their security and privacy when using these platforms. Furthermore, we suggest future research directions.

212 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: Though there are several anti-phishing software and techniques for detecting potential phishing attempts in emails and detecting phishing contents on websites, phishers come up with new and hybrid techniques to circumvent the availableSoftware and techniques.
Abstract: Phishing is a form of identity theft that occurs when a malicious Web site impersonates a legitimate one in order to acquire sensitive information such as passwords, account details, or credit card numbers.Though there are several anti-phishing software and techniques for detecting potential phishing attempts in emails and detecting phishing contents on websites, phishers come up with new and hybrid techniques to circumvent the available software and techniques.

210 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A thorough review of the different security and privacy risks, which threaten the well-being of OSN users in general, and children in particular, is presented and an overview of existing solutions that can provide better protection, security, and privacy forOSN users is presented.
Abstract: Many online social network (OSN) users are unaware of the numerous security risks that exist in these networks, including privacy violations, identity theft, and sexual harassment, just to name a few. According to recent studies, OSN users readily expose personal and private details about themselves, such as relationship status, date of birth, school name, email address, phone number, and even home address. This information, if put into the wrong hands, can be used to harm users both in the virtual world and in the real world. These risks become even more severe when the users are children. In this paper we present a thorough review of the different security and privacy risks which threaten the well-being of OSN users in general, and children in particular. In addition, we present an overview of existing solutions that can provide better protection, security, and privacy for OSN users. We also offer simple-to-implement recommendations for OSN users which can improve their security and privacy when using these platforms. Furthermore, we suggest future research directions.

209 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202384
2022165
202178
2020107
2019108
2018112