The Lion King | 9
possible for people not to keep money
at home, robbers have also learnt new
ways of stealing money without visiting
the home. Online fraudsters are contin-
uously devising new methods of wreak-
ing havoc on people’s finances using
the various platforms in the e-space.
One of the most common ways of per-
petrating online fraud is identity theft.
Identity theft occurs when a fraudster
obtains and uses another person’s
personal data by deception, with the
intent to commit fraud for economic
gain.
Identity thieves are mainly interested in
stealing their victim’s confidential data
which include: User-ID and Password,
ATM card number and PIN, Bank ac-
count number, email ID and password,
Internet banking login credentials and
Cover Story
What you don’t know about
Identity Theft
By Christian Onyenibeji
T
he alerts came in at 12 midnight.
Beep, beep, beep, beep! In quick
succession they poured into Aisha’s
phone. Startled out of sleep and won-
dering who could be sending her so
many text messages at such an odd
time of the night, she reached for her
phone.
They were not ordinary text messages;
they were transaction alerts! Money
had just been debited from her ac-
count. In alarm, she grabbed her purse
from her bedside drawer where it lay
and scattered the contents on the bed.
Her debit card was there. So who, was
withdrawing money from her account,
she wondered in panic.
Electronic banking has made banking
convenient but it has also introduced
new risks. Since e-banking has made it
other valuable information about the
victim.
They adopt different techniques to
commit identity theft, the techniques
can be technical and non technical.
Some of the common techniques
include:
Shoulder surfing at ATMs and POS ter-
minals:
where someone watches from
behind as one punches in his or her PIN
at an ATM or POS terminal.
Dumpster diving:
This is when criminals
ransack waste bins to obtain copies
of documents that were not properly
disposed containing confidential data
like bank statement, phone number,
cheque book, letters, ATM/POS re-
ceipts.
