Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Foreign Literature

According to Mayer (2006), Identity theft/Stealing Identity is made possible by the

nature of modern payment systems. In the modern economy, sellers are willing to offer goods

and services to strangers in exchange for a promise to pay, provided the promise is backed

up by data that link the buyer to a specific account or credit history. Identity theft involves

acquiring enough data about another person to counterfeit this link, enabling the thief to

acquire goods while attributing the charge to another person’s account. Of course,

anonymous data-based transactions have characterized the credit card payment system for

decades. However, in recent years retail trade has become even more anonymous and more

dependent on consumer data, as Internet commerce has grown and a wider range of sellers

have begun to offer instant credit to consumers based on their credit reports. These changes

have lowered transactions costs for consumers and merchants, but the greater reliance on

data has also created new opportunities for fraud.

Public awareness of identity theft as both a personal threat and a public policy issue

has increased substantially. A search of articles in the Lexis-Nexis “US Newspapers”

database mentioning the phrase “identity theft” yields 30 articles in 1995, almost 2,000 in

2000, and more than 12,000 articles in 2005. Credit card issuers advertise their efforts to

control identity theft, and 71 percent of respondents in a recent survey said they were

personally concerned about becoming identity theft victims.

Much of this concern has centered on new information and communications

technologies that create new channels for identity fraud. Users of e-mail are inundated with

“phishing,” a form of spam that tries to entice the recipient to send along the information
needed to steal an identity. The development of large, networked databases has spawned

concern that thieves might be able to access the personal information of thousands of people

and transmit it throughout the world. Press accounts have described online marketplaces in

which criminals buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, along with the equipment and

expertise needed to exploit them. (Zeller, 2005).

The notion that identity crimes are “victimless” crimes or an “institutional” problem is

demonstrably false, yet pervasive. The initial data continues to demonstrate that this is an

ongoing issue that impacts not just the individuals that had their identity used fraudulently, but

their friends, families, employers, classmates and the organizations involved. It is the

responsibility of industry leaders, government and advocates alike to ensure the victims of

these types of crimes are treated with the respect and deference that victims of other crimes

are afforded. The downstream effects of identity crime impact an individual immediately, and

have a delayed, secondary impact on the organizations, companies and support systems in

the victim’s circle.

These individuals have real emotional trauma that lead to additional socio-economic

impacts. Distrust, lost opportunities and physical ailments will continue to plague identity

crime victims until there are better processes put in place to assist them in the remediation of

their cases; and until we create an infrastructure that allows for the professionals involved in

the remediation of the victim’s case to holistically address their concerns, individuals will

continue to be mired in this negative and detrimental cycle. (IDENTITY THEFT RESOURCE

CENTER, 2018)

Local Literature

Most experts believe that common forms of computer related crime are significantly

underreported because ‘victims may not realize that they have been victimized, may not
realize that the conduct involved in a crime, or may decide not to complain for reasons of

embarrassment or corporate credibility’. Other reasons for the underreporting of cybercrime

are that ‘Further problems arise with the mass victimization caused by offences such as virus

propagation, because the number of victims are simply too large to identify and count, and

because such programs can continue creating new victims long after the offenders have been

caught and punished’. Finally, a factor complicating the gathering and comparison of national

crime statistics will be the fact that transnational computer related crimes are, by definition

committed in or have effects in at least two States risking multiple reporting or no reporting at

all. Thus, much of the information we have on cybercrimes is the product of studies and

surveys addressed to individuals working in information security. On such a basis the obvious

problem that survey results include only the respondents of people who agreed to participate.

Before basing critical decisions on survey information, it is important to find out what the

response rate was; although there are no absolutes, in general we aim to trust survey results

more when the response rate is high. However, response rates for telephone surveys are

often less than 10%; response rates for mail and e-mail surveys can be less than 1%. It is not

easy to make any case for random sampling under such circumstances, and all results from

such lowresponse-rate surveys should be viewed as indicating the range of problems or

experiences of the respondents rather than as indicators of population statistics. (Identity

Theft Resource Center, 2003).

Increasing public awareness on frauds, such as identity theft, is an essential

component of the BSP’s financial consumer-protection agenda. A well-informed citizenry is

essential to maintaining financial stability, which is a key policy objective of the BSP,” the

central bank said in its recent advisory. According to the central bank, identity theft could

affect the banking system because stealing of personal information to commit fraud is a crime

that may seriously undermine a person’s finances, credit history and reputation.
“If a person thinks that his or her personal information has been compromised, the BSP

advises the public to change their passwords, security questions relating to their personal

information, ATM and online access,” the central bank said. (Bianca Cuaresma, June 17,

2016)