Identity Theft
The first form of credit card hijacking is basically identity theft, which is the deliberate assumption of another person's identity. Identity theft is usually the result of serious breaches of privacy and often involves the victim compromising a great deal of financial and personal information allowing the thief to charge an existing credit card account or open up new credit card accounts in the name of the victim. Traditionally, methods of identity theft for credit card hijacking have involved mail interception or skimming of credit card data. As online transaction volumes increase, new methods for hijacking identities for credit card fraud include phishing and the use of spyware and botnets.
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Famous quotes containing the words identity and/or theft:
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969)