Identity theft

Identity theft is when another person assumes your identity. It is a growing crime and is usually related in some way to the internet.

Identity theft can start with someone finding photos of you, including your real name and occupations. They then create a web page or a profile somewhere with this information and then claims that it is in fact them. Sometimes they may put a different name to the photo and hence claim that the real person is a fake.

A person doing this can cause great emotional discomfort, can lead to real life stalking, serious harassment and other crimes. They can smear your name, do things themselves but then put your name to it and so forth.

In some cases, however, identity theft is more akin to fan worship. Someone finds a really pretty or nice person (usually a woman) and assumes their identity. The person assuming this identity could be either male or female. This seems innocent enough, but the person impersonating may end up doing things which the real person might find disgusting, for example they may post on Wikipedia Review and do various acts in relation to this. It may cause real life problems for the person. While in most cases fan worship kind of identity theft is more harmless and often flattering, it can lead to serious problems in the form of defamation.

Another form of identity theft is in the form of theft, which often involves stolen credit cards, but can also involve stole e-mail accounts, accounts on various online servers, or even entire projects themselves. This is perhaps the most sinister of all of the types of identity theft.

When someone has their credit card stolen, it is usually fairly simple to have the credit card cancelled and be issued with a new one. However, in some cases the perpetrator of the crime does not simply buy lots of fun goodies and have a party with it - in some cases the perpetrator buys an account somewhere, in the victim's name.

If the perpetrator had bought an account with a child pornography site, then if police ever catch them, the police will target the victim, who could even go to jail over it.

The perpetrator could similarly create a web site with their stolen account and write various defamatory things about someone. For example, the current head of the CIA had a defamatory web site written about him prior to his becoming the head of the CIA, and the person that wrote it had done so using a stolen credit card. Whilst they did eventually find that the person who they thought had done it wasn't the real perpetrator, the person who actually did it remarkably went unpunished, and the one who did do it was briefly incarcerated.

Some forms of identity theft are stealing an e-mail account in order to steal various online accounts and defame someone, writing all sorts of things that could get the person in legal trouble.

Some people have had their own web projects stolen from them through identity theft.

For example, the web site Wikipedia Review, which was created on ProBoards by Igor Alexander had its own domain name and software purchased by Blissyu2 using an internode e-mail address. During a 12 month period where he did not have any internet access, Somey wrote to them asking for the site to be transferred from being hosted by GoDaddy and using forum software from Lunarpages to have both hosted by HostGator, claiming that he was the true owner of the site, which he claimed he purchased off Selina, who in actual fact was never the owner. GoDaddy and Lunarpages wrote to Blissyu2 to confirm the agreement and when there was no response, Somey claimed that he was no longer using that internode e-mail account and instead gave them a new one. By the time that Blissyu2 had received the e-mails from internode, the site had already been transferred over in secret, stealing the site from him. After Blissyu2 asked Internode to transfer the e-mails to his Octa4 e-mail account, Somey complained to Octa4 that he was freeloading and the Octa4 account was disabled, thus destroying any chance of getting the site back.

This theft was not done for monetary reasons, but rather for power reasons. Running a popular site like Wikipedia Review is good for your resume. Taking it over in secret like that, using illegal identity theft means was a good way to do it.

Identity theft in most cases is unprosecutable, especially where international barriers are in force. It is really up to responsible web hosts to deal with it effectively themselves. People have to work to try to protect themselves as much as they can from impersonation, as it can cause serious real life problems.