Identity fraud may occur when someone steals personal information, opens credit card accounts in the victim's name without permission, and charges merchandise to those accounts. Conversely, identity fraud does not occur when a credit card is simply stolen. Stealing one’s credit card may be consumer fraud, but is not identity fraud. Identity fraud is a synonym of unlawful identity change. It indicates unlawful activities that use the identity of another person or of a non-existing person as a principal tool for merchandise procurement.
Identity fraud can occur without identity theft, as in the case where the fraudster has been given someone's identity information for other reasons but uses it to commit fraud, or when the person whose identity is being used is colluding with the person committing the fraud. One case of identity fraud is when the PlayStation Network was hacked into, and the man responsible for this took the information from everyone who had their credit card information installed on the Network. It took three months to fix the problem, when it occurred. Moreover, identity fraud does not necessarily involve colluding or theft of another's personal information; it can also involve the use of fake names, ID cards, falsified or forged documents, and lying about his or her own age to simply "hide" his or her true identity. Reasons for this type of identity fraud may include wanting to purchase tobacco or alcohol as a minor as well as desire to coninue playing on a certain sports team or organization when that person is really too old to compete.
Read more about Identity Fraud: Stolen Identification, Organized Crime, United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words identity and/or fraud:
“Personal change, growth, development, identity formation—these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events—a job, a mate, a child—through which we will pass into a life of relative ease.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)