Identity theft

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

Personality caught in the social net: Facebook phishing

Abstract: Phishing is a well-documented social phenomenon whereby an individual or group poses as a trustworthy source to lure an unsuspecting user to give up sensitive, personal details willingly; this data is deceitfully utilised in identity theft, cash transfer and fraudulent credit card transactions. This study focuses on the correlation of phishing and Facebook users’ personality traits. Participants were asked to complete questionnaires measuring conscientiousness, impulsivity and trust in online firms; additionally they were asked to rate the legitimacy of Facebook email and web login page stimuli where some samples were genuine and others were phish. The findings indicate that: individuals who score highly in cognitive instability, a subscale of impulsivity, log in more frequently and identify fewer phishing stimuli than those who score low in cognitive instability; not all users identify all trust factors (present or missing) in Facebook emails and websites; and individuals mistake authentic Facebook emails and web pages as phish.

Cyber-Identity Theft

Abstract: Internet technology facilitates “faceless” transactions. At the same time, a new set of risks arises. In this article, we focus on the Internet-related risks associated with identity theft. Specifically, our objectives are to explain electronic-based identity theft (i.e., cyber-identity theft) and to explore the impact of cyber-identity theft on consumers, businesses, organizations and public policies. Our article makes two specific contributions to the identity theft literature: (a) it explains identity theft as it relates to the Internet and (b) it defines key methods of cyberidentity theft.

Information Security in an Identity Management Lifecycle: Mitigating Identity Crimes

Abstract: Identity management is a wide area that deals with identifying individuals or entities in a system (such as a nation, community, network, or organization) and controlling access to resources or use and flow of transactions (e.g., financial) within systems by associating user rights and restrictions with the established identity (identifiers). A qualitative interpretive methodology was adopted with industry and government organizational experts interviewed. In addition, secondary data were collected and analyzed. We used a lifecycle frame to interpret themes and issues from interview transcripts and other collated secondary data. The paper's contribution is to make sense of ‘identity’ in offline and/or online channels and to extend a 3stage identity management lifecycle framework (IDSP, 2008) to four which includes: initial ‘enrolment’, ‘transacting’ ‘database’, and ‘purging’.