Getting online is great fun and life with an internet connection can be a lot easier than life without.
It’s not just being able to e-mail friends, or finding holidays online. Things like internet banking and online financial services also make life simpler.
Unfortunately criminals are finding ways to make their lives easier by using the internet too.
And it isn’t just stealing credit card numbers or selling fake goods on auction sites, although those do still happen.
Last week six British men were jailed for taking part in a ring which used stolen identities to steal £350,000 from UK banks.
Using the internet they had found out enough information about people to be able to convince banks to let them get loans and credit cards in their names.
They then borrowed a lot of money and laundered it through various business accounts, hoping it would never be traced.
Fortunately they were caught, but the people whose names they had used have had a very worrying time.
The same problem has been faced by some regular eBay users.
eBay is an online auction site, where you can sell or buy almost anything. Sellers post details of the things they want to get rid of and other users make bids.
The goods go to the highest bidder when the auction is over.
In the last month over a dozen people have complained that items they paid several hundred pounds for did not arrive as promised.
The people they were buying from all had good eBay track records, and were reputable traders.
Identity Fraud
However each of them had been the victim of identity theft. This means that money was being sent to criminals who had ‘hijacked’ the good reputations of their victims.
Of course, identity theft doesn’t always use the internet. Stealing people’s credit card receipts or old gas bills from the bin is still the usual way it happens.
But a lot of us now keep personal information and even bank account details on our computers.
Some viruses and worms, programs which copy themselves over the internet, have been written to steal this sort of information.
Things are getting worse. Last year in the United States the number of complaints of internet-related identity theft tripled to 2,352.
Now the latest version of the ZoneAlarm personal firewall, software that protects the security of your PC when online, has new features to protect personal information from hackers.
The US government has posted some sensible advice.
They suggest keeping a close check on your credit cards and other bills.
Look out for unexpected transactions and if a bill doesn’t arrive one month then chase it up - it could be that someone has taken over your account and changed the billing address.
It’s also a good idea not to keep personal information on your laptop, in case it’s stolen.
And you should be very careful of any program you download over the internet. It might be secretly sending your personal information to an identity thief.
It’s a shame that there are people out there who would do this sort of thing, but if you are careful about how you use the net, you can reduce the chances of it happening to you.
Has your ID been stolen on the net?
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