Home Identity and Privacy Protection Identity Knight How identity thieves can steal your Identity

How identity thieves can steal your Identity

There are too many tricks to steal the identity on line: attack a Web-shop, fool the customers by creating fake on-line shopping services, sniff (listen) the network traffic from the victim's computer etc.

One of the possible tricks to steal the Identity is to use Internet Explorer security breach:

Most Internet Explorer users enjoy the convenient autocomplete feature (IE 5.0 and higher). It remembers data, including credit card information, used to fill in Web forms and saves it in a "safe" place (Windows Protected Storage). The next time you are required to fill out a similar form, it completes it for you automatically. The problem - it is possible to capture and read the contents of "Protected Storage". If someone accesses your computer (directly or remotely) your credit card information can be stolen.

Sometimes there is no need to crack into victim's computer. 591,000 laptops were stolen in the US in 2001, according to Safeware, Inc., an insurance company. According to insurance statistics, if you own a laptop you have a 1 in 14 chance it will be stolen. Stolen laptops are commonly the best source of Identity data for the thieves.

Read article Security Gap in IE 5.0? by Michael J. Martinez in archives of ABCNews.com to learn what the security experts say about Internet Explorer autocomplete fields security problem.

To solve this Internet Explorer security problem we have created Identity Knight.