Congratulations, you have been selected at random by Pepsi (insert any other world famous brand) to be the lucky winner of US $ 500,000 (insert any astronomical amount). Most youngsters today who grew up with the internet are familiar with such emails, and are habituated to deleting them without a second thought. [break]
But a lot of people who receive these emails for the first time are still vulnerable to such scams, as proven by the fake lottery racket that was recently busted by the police in Kathmandu. On June 14, the Central Investigative Bureau arrested three individuals for sending text messages to mobile phones informing people that they had won a lottery. They would then ask for personal details including information of bank accounts, and used the information to extract money from the accounts. The scam came to the notice of the police after Nepal Investment Bank alerted them of unusual activities in several of its bank accounts.
While identity thefts and scams have been around for a long time, the digital era amplifies their risk and pervasiveness to exponential levels. Easy access to internet and simple ways of sending text messages or emails to thousands of people at once make it easy to operate these rackets. The minimal capital requirement is another reason for their proliferation—all that is needed is an internet connection and a few hours of leisure. As a result, we now have not just emails and text messages asking for bank information, but SOS messages from friends claiming to be in distress in foreign lands and asking for money, links leading to sites that look exactly like bank websites, and emails purportedly from reputed traders like ebay asking you to part with your goods (in exchange for money that never arrives). And that is quite apart from spyware which is stealthily installed in systems to pass on information without a person even being aware of it.
Digital identity theft is a growing concern in all parts of the world. Even developed nations employ many security measures to protect sensitive information like bank account details. But while most of these nations already have passed through the early stages of digital scams and are more or less familiar with them, our county with just over 18 percent internet penetration presents a vast untapped market which is completely unaware of the phenomena. What we require is awareness programs that will inform the growing horde of new internet users of the perils of digital identity theft.
Users should be careful to safeguard all their sensitive personal information like bank account details. Also, seemingly innocuous information like phone numbers, address, birth dates, and authentic identifiers like passport and citizenship numbers should not be shared digitally unless the receiver can be fully trusted. Sometimes, thieves may go on to usurp not just money but entire identities constructed from details of home and work life, substantiated with details of aforesaid identifiers. Digital identity theft is here to stay, and the only way out for ordinary users is constant vigilance.
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