Thousands become victim to identity thieves every [...]]]> It is the age of the web. People thrive online and virtually live there! Naturally, online identity has become as important as real world identity. With the onset of the increased interaction enabled by the Internet and e-commerce, identity fraud and crime have reached a new level of significance.

Thousands become victim to identity thieves every year throughout the world. Often, the fraudsters trick innocent web users into providing personal information and then use the information illicitly. Forged identities are also quite common.

Credit card thefts and unauthorized credit accounts opened without one’s knowledge are another typical example of identity theft. The victim’s identity is misappropriated and used for making expensive purchases or opening new accounts. The potential for such frauds have become a major hurdle for e-commerce.

Many of the reported identity crimes have been cases where the rich and famous are exploited. Money, power and the sheer thrill of the risk involved seemed to have attracted many towards such identity crimes.

Christopher Rocancourt shot to fame by conning many  rich and famous personalities in the US by pretending to be a Rockefeller heir, a movie producer, a global financier, the son of Sophia Loren or the nephew of Dino De Laurentis. Rosario Poidimani (an Italian Businessman) impersonated the King of Portugal and sold imaginary aristocratic titles and fraudulent diplomatic passports, with the support of imaginary offshore bank accounts and an elaborate throne room.

Through sites like snopes.com and truthorfiction.com, many such scams have been bought to our attention. For instance, the Nigerian scam mails requesting the transfer of a huge fortune to the recipient’s bank account, in return for which they assure a percentage of the fortune to the recipient. There are certain others who claim that you have won a lottery worth billions. In all such cases, they ask for your account details and use this information for illegitimate actions. Phishing is where the fraudster poses as a legitimate organization, bank, etc., and asks the user to update their personal information. Their website will be almost similar to the original one, and it is hard to spot the difference.

One of the safest ways to safeguard one’s identity online is to establish an indisputably authentic identity verified through trusted sources. Online reputation management involves monitoring your identity online, analyzing and influencing it. If you are an individual, get verified and show that you are who you claim t obe through your website / blog / online pages. If you run a company, odds are high that your customers will have voiced their opinions about you via the Internet. When potential customers type your company name in search engines, the first two pages are the most likely to be viewed by them. It is your responsibility to monitor this space and see whether it contains positive or unwarranted negative news about your company or products. You can keep constant track of what is being written about you by subscribing to Technorati, RSS feeds, Google alerts, etc.

Life on the web has become intertwined with normal life, and our identity and reputation online are immensely important for us to safeguard.

It is our hope that Crederity can help you with helping to establish a credible identity online. With a dedicated team entirely focused on fraud issues, Crederity can help safeguard you against online identity thieves, providing an additional hurdle over which would-be thieves must surmount. We invite you to invest in Crederity, and invest in Trust.  We also invite you to contact us with any suggestions you have for improving Crederity, as we value your feedback and fully intend to do the best job that we can in helping to safeguard and enhance your identity online.

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Alongside its rising popularity, the site is [...]]]> Social networking has caught up with netizens around the world like a raging fire. Twitter is particularly hot, with its ‘tweets’ that enable its users to send and read others’ updates. With its total focus on micro-blogging, the portal has become one of the most favoured social networking sites.

Alongside its rising popularity, the site is also bringing to light identity crisis issues. Not so long ago, the American rapper, record producer, author and singer Kayne West was heard accusing the portal for having let someone misuse his identity. Dalai Lama surprised the world by tweeting under the name ‘ohhdl‘; only, it turned out to be the prank of an impersonator, leading to the cancellation of the account. There was another instance—the celebrity impersonation of Dr Robert H. Schuller, the famed televangelist.

And now, recently, the case of Tony La Russa. Manager of St Louis Cardinals Major League Baseball franchise, La Russa is now suing Twitter, claiming that someone is pretending to be him on the site. Tony claims that he had warned Twitter of this fake account and asked them to suspend it, but they took no action. The other side of the story says that Tony, characteristic of him as it is, went ahead and sued the portal without any notice. Whatever the truth is, the damage has been done: to both the individual’s identity and to the portal’s credibility.

This poses a question to the everyday web user. How secure can they be of their identity? How can they defend themselves from their identity being hijacked? We all may not be celebrities, but each individual is unique—and in this day and age, no one can shut themselves from the cyber world.

Fake Twitter users pose a conundrum for the portal. Social networking now assumes a prominent role in the lives of people and there ought to be a concrete solution for such hijackings, which are nothing but identity theft. Such thefts could cost your life much more than a million bucks stolen from your account!

Fake accounts—especially so if it’s in the name of a celebrity (not to mention the thousands of followers)—and impersonators are turning out to be a major threat to twitter users. It can tarnish the image of a person, even that of a common man.

Most of you must have heard the story of how a would-be Cisco employee messed up his image through an innocent-sounding tweet. For better or for worse, this is the way of the web today; anyone could be posing as you, and tweeting away uncalled for comments about your friends, your family, your job, boss, coworkers, or company.

There’s a limit to which people can expect social networking sites to make sure you’re the real person…what with millions of people registering! Where’s Twitter’s ability in screening and figuring out who is who, really? Where’s your security?

We hope that answer can be found here with us! Crederity is working on solutions that will set free the socially savvy netizens of today to tweet away with authority. If you’re Crederity approved and let your friends and Twitter followers know to look out for your verified seal, your followers can rest assured knowing that you are in fact who you claim to be! With a dedicated team entirely focused on such fraud issues as identity fraud and impersonation, Crederity is striving to help minimize, and eventually prevent, this identity crisis that Twitter faces today. Please let us know if you have any ideas on how we can further assist you.