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Smart VPN l October 10, 2015

Every Minute, Americans Have Been Victimized by Identity Theft & Cybercrime

America is a great land, but comes with many grievous worries that the people face everyday. It’s not just Ebola, terrorisms or other ground crimes – but Americans have been jugged with more severe crimes like Identity theft & cybercrimes.

Identity theft is among the fastest growing crime in the world, especially in United States. According to a report published by Justice Department, about 17.6 million Americans were victims of Identity theft and cybercrimes in 2014, where most of them reported that some unknown person has used their financial information.

The report further revealed that nearly 7% of total US population, which is 1 in 20 Americans that have been the victim of Identity Theft. This is an increase of 1 million people compare to 2012. According to the report, more than 19 people fall victim to Identity Theft every minute, and the most common type was the ‘unauthorized misuse’ of their credit card and bank accounts.

According to a research released by Javelin Strategy & Research, $16 Billion stolen from Identity Theft victims in 2014, which is a huge loss. The director of fraud and security at Javelin, Al Pascual said that the numbers compare to last year is reportedly low, but we cannot declare victory. He further said, "The occurrence of identity fraud hasn't changed much over the past year, and it is still a significant problem."

Identity Theft is seriously the most common and fast growing crime in America these days, and something similar happens to the President Obama as well:

The World Wide Web is free, but not Safe completely

Whether we acknowledge it or not, but this is the reality that we all have to face. We are good with the Internet, because it has significantly changed our lives, and we are enjoying it too.

Since we have everything easily accessible on the Internet, chances are high that we can get caught easily too. Identity thieves are calm people, and they always hunt for people who share their financial information on the web.

How Thieves Steal Your Identity Online?

There are numerous ways by which your important financial information can be leaked. Sometimes, the website you browse might get hacked that results in surrender of all the credit card and financial information stored on that website. This is rare though these days!

You give us an easy way for Identity thief to steal your data when you choose to use the following:

- Use an untrusted/unsecure website to perform a financial transaction; where you submit all your important details.

- Using an unsecure Public Wi-Fi, that allows hackers/thieves to easily get into the network and pull out all your personal and financial information.

Even a pro hacker can use your email a bridge to grab all other crucial information of your account, which they use to perform unauthorized transaction from your card or bank. And while you’re going about your life, like normal, you suddenly come to know that you have performed some financial transaction, which in actual, isn’t yours.

How do I Prevent the losses?

Will you trust a stranger? No, you won’t! Similarly, in the digital journey, never share your information with someone who you can’t trust. It includes, websites that don’t offer SSL on their cart and to naked Public networks, which can easily be hacked.

Virtual Private Network (VPN) comes very handy here. How?

Since we discussed already that Internet is free and open, so the more chances for hackers to invade your privacy. A VPN helps you to combat with this all. VPN encrypts all the communication/data transferred between your computer and the Internet, which keeps all your sensitive information coded. As VPN transfers all information through a secure tunnel, hacker left with no chance to see what information you are sending to the website, and they can’t hack your information by any means.

VPN not only allows you to keep distance from the Identity thieves, but it also gives you the freedom to access global content no matter of your location.