Have you ever encountered the following situation in your life? Immediately after you purchased a new car, you received a phone call from the insurance company. When you are immersed in the happiness of your new born baby, a sample sack of milk is delivered by express to your home. And the decoration company will be the first one to send you congratulation messages even before your mom when you bought a new house. So, you may ask, where did these people get my information?
In recent years, with the development of electronic information technology, to obtain personal information which bears more and more social and economic interests becomes relatively simple. This leads to an increasing trend of criminal cases of identity theft in China. In one case lately reported, only need to spend 100 RMB, one can purchase in a website 1000 pieces of personal information of others. These large amounts of information include full names, ID numbers, home addresses, and phone numbers of diverse groups of people, as bank clients, company shareholders, insurance policy owners and luxury car drivers. One of the website’s users, just in 4 months, with 50 pieces of personal information purchased from this website, successfully applied for dozens of credit cards from different banks and subsequently maliciously overdraft by140.000 RMB.
In another case, a university lecturer has been accused of burglary, however, in the end it turns out that the criminal is someone else who had stolen the victim’s ID card.
So what is identity theft?
Identity theft is an illegal acquisition of identity information of others, like ID number, driver’s license number, account number, credit card number etc. in order to counterfeit the identity. It may occur in any occasions of our life: internet, bank, telecom, traffic control department, hospitals, insurance companies, post offices, real estate agencies, travel agencies etc., all these places are the receivers of citizen’s personal information, however, mayalso be suppliers as well. If no supervision is provided by the government, the individual information will be repeatedly transacted in this supply and demand network.
For the past few years, theft of identity has become a globally serious criminal crime. Statistics show that every year nearly 10 million people’s individual information was stolen in United States. In China, the identity theft also takes on growing trend year by year and has developed various types: to steal the User ID and password of someone who the thief got acquainted with on QQ or Msn, and then does fraud to the friends of the victim; by means of some kind of software to steal someone’s phone number and borrow money from others usurping the name of the real phone number owner; to steal the password of the bank account online, and transfer the money in the account to his own account; to make fake ATM or bank card copy equipment to record the magnetic informationof the card etc.
Therefore, in 2009 the People’s Congress passed the criminal law amendment which stipulates that illegal access, transaction, offer of individual information will be treated as crime with the purpose of effectively fighting against the rising crime trend, and which established a historic step in the protection of legitimate rights and interests of citizens.
How we can prevent identity theft in our daily life? The experts shows some actions we may take in the following aspects: when using a copy of ID card, it would be better to indicate on the copy to whom the hardcopy is offered and in which purpose it’s used. You can also cross a line behind every paragraph on the paper to avoid any adding words by others. You should check your statement account of credit card frequently to make sure that there is no purchase record of others. Shred any paper with your personal information on it before throwing away them. Safe keep your ID Card and must report and register immediately in the case of its loss. Do not reveal any information of your bank account or ID number in weibo or we chat skype ect.
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©2013 D’Andrea & Partners Business Consulting
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