There are myriad ways that bad actors can obtain your information and use it for all sorts of nefarious purposes, mostly by stealing your money, though occasionally for other types of fraud or to cover their tracks when committing further crimes. This is one of the main reasons why ft identity can be so devastating. If a criminal steals your credit card information, your bank will likely reimburse you for the lost money. If, however, the same criminal impersonates you to run an international child pornography ring, your problems become significantly worse... especially since many people in law enforcement aren't knowledgeable about the latest types of cybercrime, so " it wasn't me" might not be good. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayHow does it happen? We'll look at the many identity methods in the pages that follow and also show you how you can protect yourself from being a victim or fight back if you already are one. Identity theft methods range from low-tech (like rummaging through the trash for undestroyed financial documents or stealing those new credit cards the bank sends you unexpectedly) to sophisticated database breaches and other cyberattacks staged in half the world by large criminal organizations. to finance cyberterrorism operations. America's first identity fraud Philip Hendrik Nering Bögel had some financial problems and was a creative thinker. So in 1793, when things got too hot for the Dutchman (who was wanted for embezzlement at the time), he did what any forward-thinking identity thief would do today: he darted out of the Netherlands, starting this continent a new city, conceived sparingly and dedicated to the proposal that Bögel deserved better. Calling himself "Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop", Bögel began to be of great assistance to early Texas leaders Moses and Stephen F. Austin in obtaining land grants. After being appointed land commissioner of Texas, Bögel came to found a Texas town which he named after himself. Today, visitors to Bastrop, Texas, population 5,340, can celebrate how America's first successful identity fraud operation netted one boy an entire town. My identity isn't worth stealing! – FalseAttackers are intelligent and look for the easiest path to reach their end goal. Often, the easiest path through your computer is you. You might say, “I only have pictures of my grandchildren on my hard drive.” But your machine is connected to the Internet, making it a target. Hackers can take control of your computer and join it to a secret global network for spam, attacks on other computers, and other nefarious activities. While they're at it, they might even steal your banking information. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for hackers to destroy a computer, so that even those family photos that are invaluable to you, while useless to others, end up lost along with the dead computer. Many Types of Identity Theft Criminals impersonate you online for a number of different purposes. reasons and in various ways. For those talking about cyber, the imitation is usually part of a larger cyberbullying effort. But in most cases the reasons are economic. Whether designed to obtain bank cards or bank loans in your name, obtain credit in your name, or impersonate you to use your existing credit, identity theft is usually a gateway cybercrime: an initial act, a vertex upon which they find other criminal schemes. So, actually, the.