Le Web3 Live

A fortnight ago, Canadian student Adam Morrison was arrested by the police because his Facebook profile indicated he wanted to kill many people the way two teenagers did ten years ago at Columbine High School in the United States. Actually, Adam was not guilty. After checking his personal computer, the police found someone else had opened a fake Facebook profile using the student’s name and e-mail address.

This kind of crime is a form “identity theft”. While the phrase is relatively new, the practise of usurping somebody’s identity is thousands of years old. In real life, it is still very common. But this kind of crime is spreading with the developing of the Internet.
How come ? The techniques for obtaining information about someone are more and more numerous. The most efficient ones are the browsing of social network sites such as Facebook or MySpace for personal details that have been posted by users but also the stealing of personal information in computer databases – by hacking, or the use of Trojan horses ( a very common type of spyware.)

Victims’ lives may be completely ruined (see Michelle Brown’s testimony).

Organizing efficient protection

However, it’s organizations and firms that are the most important targets for identity thieves. Recently, the US Identity Theft Resource Center showed an increase in the total value of identity fraud to $56.6 billion in 2006. Major firms are now striving to protect themselves, largely because their clients are also the victims of this form of cybercrime. Actually, companies are legally compelled to do so. But THE solution to get rid of identity theft remains to be found.
As for individuals, the best protection seems to be not to identify oneself at all on the Internet, or at least to set up a kind of guardianship of personal identifiers by consumers.