Digital Identity Theft: The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received 1,108,609 identity theft complaints in 2022, staggeringly lower than 1,434,676 complaints in 2021. Identity theft has increased in the digital era because we have multiple accounts.
Online identities become vulnerable to attacks and data breaches because they are protected with traditional means like passwords, PINs, answers to security questions, etc. Even accounts using multifactor authentication majorly two or more of the predictable options.
Must Read | Passwordless Authentication: All You Need to Know
Cybercriminals use an individual’s online profile to find clues to the digital account and steal identities and financial information, leaving no room to recover reputation and money. However, the risk associated with compromised identities extends beyond these two repercussions. Today, we are going to uncover them in our blog in detail.
5 Repercussion of Digital Identity Theft
Loss of Healthcare Information
Cybercriminals often go after the medical information of a person for many reasons after stealing digital identities. Primarily, they can use the healthcare information to avail drugs and sell them on the streets or the dark web.
They can also avail themselves of the monetary benefits mentioned in the medical records. Recently, the Tampa Bay Times reported that hackers posted personal health information (PHI) and personal notes from 20,000 people. The information was stolen from the Florida Department of Health.
The stolen information includes COVID-19 diagnoses, worker compensation records, HIV test results, Social Security Numbers (SSNs), and lab results. In March 2024, research stated that SSNs sell for the highest amount, $15, and credit card information for $3. Therefore, while some might take it lightly that the loss of medical information isn’t worrisome, in reality, it is.
Also Read | Future of Face Recognition Technology
Financial Burden (Loans, Credit Cards, & More)
Fraudsters primarily attempt identity theft attacks for financial gain. They use digital identities to create new accounts, acquire money, avail loans, open credit and overdraft lines, and elapse credit cards.
Moreover, they also indulge in check fraud and numerous bank scams. Fortunately, people who report unauthorized transactions during the early stages often remain burden-free from the enormous debt. However, those who fail to do so become victims of an unending financial loss.
Financial loss also creates havoc in personal life, as the person would have enormous debt and can’t get new credit cards or loans due to a bad credit score, elapsed limits, and zero trust from lenders.
Fake Passports and Traveling
Another significant Disadvantages of Digital Identity theft is that criminals use it to create flight bookings and cross borders. It is hard to catch such people, especially if the traveler isn’t a person using the new-age registered biometric identity system.
The same is true for airports and borders, which still depend on manual intervention during the onboarding and document verification process. Such travelers can carry drugs, black money, and other unauthorized items under a false name. If the systems don’t include biometric identity checks, catching such criminals traveling or crossing borders with fake identities becomes exceptionally challenging.
Also Read | Passwordless Authentication: All You Need to Know!
According to a report, there are terrorist cells in the US, Europe, and Canada that supply passports and other documents to criminals. It also mentioned that human smuggling and selling a person for $50,000 is the link between organized criminal syndicates and terrorists. The operation is handled by brokers in China, India, Africa, and Central & South America, and other countries.
Data Breach & Damaged Reputation
According to the Identity Theft Resouce Centre in San Diego, 1860 data sets were compromised in 2021, which increased to 3,205 in 2023, making it 78% higher than in 2022. However, data breaches don’t automatically mean that the identities get stolen; it could mean that cybercriminals can access and leak information that could put an organization at a potential risk.
On the other hand, identity theft can result in a data breach of a particular person, leading to a loss of credibility, blockage from potential websites or apps, loss of financial information, and access to sensitive information.
Also Read | How Biometrics Aid in Identity Theft Protection?
Moreover, it could take an unanticipated time to help regain the reputation with the possibility of no recovery also into place. As a result, digital identity theft leads to data breaches, which could further escalate the situation.
Puts Family Members, Elderly, Children, and Friends at Risk
Stolen identities often put family members and friends at risk, too. Digital identities provide access to multiple accounts, usually connected via a Single Sign-On module, which has become extensively popular in this era.
Also Read | Top 3 Identity Verification Trends of 2024
However, access to a single portal linked to multiple accounts makes accounts vulnerable. It even opens doors to child, spouse, or elderly identity theft, further elevating the situation to the critical drawbacks associated with it, such as fraudulent credit cards, loans, accounts, etc.
The criminals often use these identities to create fake passports, driver’s licenses, avail student loans, etc. According to a source, there were 9,15,000 victims of child identity fraud between July 2021 and July 2022.
Conclusion
Digital identity fraud is a serious problem that causes many problems besides financial loss, data breaches, and damaged reputations. A stolen identity often results in access to sensitive information, which cybercriminals can post on social media, increasing the psychological and emotional distress of the victims.
Moreover, the victims may never have another opportunity to open new online accounts without taking adequate measures, such as timely reporting the issue. In many cases, they might become obliged to pay lenders for fraudulent loans and credit card payments.
Also Read | Video Surveillance Market Trends in 2024
Even healthcare information becomes vulnerable, which allows cybercriminals to avail benefits, change the medication for selling drugs, and result in catastrophic problems, especially for elders and children, as they remain unaware of social engineering attacks and scams.
With such diverse issues, it has become essential to secure online identities by incorporating contactless biometrics, liveness detection, military-grade encryption, and real-time alerting systems.
Biocube has developed its state-of-the-art biometric identity solutions by keeping these factors in mind, which makes it even less vulnerable to Denial of Service and other major attacks or scams.
