Identity thieves use the personal information of a victim in many ways. One of those ways is when the thief uses the victim’s name and other personal information when in contact with the police. This is called criminal identity theft. The mess that the thief can create is very big and may take the victim years to set the record straight. With this type of ID theft, the time spent in prevention mode is a small fraction of the time needed to recover. It takes quite a bit of time and good record keeping to prove that the charges against the victim are the handy-work of the identity thief.

The beginning of the criminal identity theft process is the actual theft of the personal information from the victim. One way that thieves are stealing the identity of the victims is through their company. Most of the time, the company that the victim works for has a database filled with employee information. Thieves are attempting to hack into these databases because there are so many identities available to ruin. This usually happens as one of the many types of identity theft on the computer.

It is extremely critical to protect your computer as best you can. Any leak in the protection of your computer will be taken advantage of. Computer identity theft is on the rise. This will continue to be the case for a long time as identity thieves are using different, unseen tactics online to get a hold of fresh new identities. When online, it is important to be as vigilant as you may be when at the bank or using an ATM. Just because you cannot see any people, it doesn’t mean there are not people watching your movements online. A lot of people use the mentality that Internet identity theft can’t happen to them because they have a stock, anti-virus software installed on their computer. This is a good step, but is only the first step in computer protection.

Unfortunately, identity theft court cases are very rare compared to the amount of identity thefts that happen every year. The identity theft laws that have been passed in the last ten years have helped prosecutors when the criminal is caught and prosecuted. Catching the criminal is typically the difficult part of the criminal identity theft process. Before the wave of identity theft laws, identity thieves would rarely get any extra time on top of the theft they committed for using the stolen identity for their own benefit. Thankfully, the laws have gotten much more in depth and the sentences have gotten longer.