Identity Theft Check

Identity crimes can be boiled down into three general categories: theft, obfuscation and manipulation.

Although there is considerable crossover to many of the points in these categories, the primary motivations between them are relatively distinct:

Theft:

This is stealing directly from the person whose personal details you have stolen or those that person has some financial agreement with. This can include taking money directly from their bank accounts or using their credit/debit or insurance details to acquire goods and services for yourself.

It can also include stealing from a company by using that company’s details to gain credit or receive services, products or any form of trade.

Obfuscation:

Criminal obfuscation is when a stolen identity is used to hide one’s own identity during a criminal activity. This could include posing as someone else when being questioned or apprehended by legal authorities or using someone else’s contact details as a drop-off point for stolen or illicit goods that will be collected later.

Identity obfuscation is a common tactic for many vice crimes (like blackmail) and also for more organised and/or lethal criminal activities such as illegal immigration and ‘people smuggling’, the international drugs trade, terrorism and even espionage.

Manipulation:

This general heading covers some of the more bizarre and hardest to legislate-against aspects of potential identity crimes, such as using someone else’s personal information to impersonate him or her in daily life, either to defame that person or gain credit for that person’s achievements.

Clearly then, identity crimes are quite diverse and it is rare that one of the above-described general ‘types’ of identity crime will exist without the others – so a theft crime invariably involves criminal obfuscation as well, etc.