There is a lot of murmur in the market that identity theft is growing at an alarming pace and taking different forms. However, a lot of other kind of fraud gets clubbed under the head of identity theft, whereas it really isn’t identity theft. Frauds like forged checks or someone stealing our credit card details and committing a fraudulent transaction are not cases of identity theft.

Identity theft as the terminology suggests entails stealing another person’s personal details like the social security number, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, and other details and setting up a false identity in that person’s name and conduct transactions. These transactions usually include, raising loans and procuring credit cards.

A recent consumer survey conducted by a Michigan based think tank revealed that about nine million people considered themselves to be victims of identity theft. However, when the study analyzed the actual causes of the perception, the number of people affected by identity fraud turned out to be only two million.

The study reports further that this perception about identity fraud is also leading to the misconception that identity fraud is growing exponentially. Identity fraud, in reality, has grown at a stable rate over the past few years and is much under control.

The report also seeks to clarify that offline identity fraud accounts for the majority chunk of identity theft as opposed to online theft.

Thus, while identity theft may be an issue, one does not need to get paranoid about it and being overcautious all the time. One must take due precautions and not share one’s personal information to unsolicited callers or through unknown websites.

To read further about this report, click here.

Fraudsters keep innovating tricks on the Internet that can easily entice you to share your personal information and you can become a victim of identity fraud. A new guide published by the BT in the UK gives users insight into precautions that need to be exercised while being online.

It advises that one must have separate passwords for different secure sites and that these passwords should be alpha numeric and also have other characters. You must change these passwords often and never share these with anyone. You should never access secure sites through links in emails as they might lead to duplicate sites that might strip your information. Always access your secure sites through the url window or through favourites.

You should turnoff your broadband connection when it is not in use and use a minimum of 128 bit encryption if using a wireless connection.

Avoid going to sites that claim that you have won an award. In all probability, these sites will strip your identity. Finally keep you antivirus and anti-spy ware up to date and run it from time to time.

To get more advice on the issue, click here.