Frank Abagnale, a conman turned FBI agent and the individual behind the concept of the movie Catch Me If You Can, stated in a conference that, “If you tell me you date of birth and where you’re born (on Facebook) I’m 98 percent of the way to stealing your identity”. He then insinuated that users who share such information are basically telling thieves to, “Come and steal my identity”. To support Frank’s theory, a study by Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross found a correlation between social security numbers and public information. The findings were that, the first three digits of a social security number (AN) were associated with the individual’s zip code based on the address during birth, the second set of digits (GN) corresponds to random assignment of the numbers 01-99, and the last four digits (SN) are the numbers 0001-9999 assigned in consecutive order. Their study proved that social security numbers can be predicted based on an individual’s place and date of birth. They were able to predict the first five digits of 2% of California residents born in 1980 …show more content…
Diana, a victim of identity of identity theft describes the process as a “nightmare” and claims that, “My husband and I would have survived better had our house burned to the ground, or if we had been burglarized or robbed at gunpoint. There would have been less hassle, less stress and less indignation”. The Bureau of Justice Statistics indicated that individuals who spend more than a month resolving the crime where most likely to experience problems in both work and personal relationships and in some cases victims suffered severe emotional distress. According to the latest identity report provided by BJS the financial cost associated with identity theft totaled $24.7 billion for the year 2013, in addition 14% of the victims had to pay for out of pocket