Thesis (MPhil)--AUT University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (x, 193 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 364.1633 JOH)

Identity theft is an ever-present and ever-growing issue in our society. Identity theft, fraud and abuse are present and growing in every market sector. The data available to describe how these identity crimes are conducted and the consequences for victims is often recorded in stories and reports by the news press, fraud examiners and law enforcement. To translate and analyze these stories in this very unstructured format, this thesis first discusses the collection of identity theft data automatically using text mining techniques from the online news stories and reports on the topic of identity theft. The collected data are used to enrich the ITAP (Identity Threat Assessment and Prediction) Project repository under development at the Center for Identity at The University of Texas. Moreover, this thesis shows the statistics of common behaviors and resources used by identity thieves and fraudsters — identity attributes used to identify people, resources employed to conduct the identity crime, and patterns of identity criminal behavior. Analysis of these results should help researchers to better understand identity threat behaviors, offer people early warning signs and thwart future identity theft crimes. / text

This thesis reviews different types of identity theft and conducts and in-depth review of the threats to our personally identifiable information (PII). There has been an alarming increase in the availability of industry applications that aggregate our PII with the promise of convenience. This paper deeply explores three data aggregators: Google Mobile Wallet, COIN and PayPal Beacon, to understand what they are, potential security implications and how widespread data aggregation may alter the identity landscape as a whole. Discussion of common technologies leveraged by these data aggregators help illustrate the vulnerability of the data consumers are willingly sharing. In an attempt to better understand the crimes that steal and fraudulently use PII, this thesis introduces the ITAP, the Identity Theft Assessment and Prediction tool to illustrate why it is important to study theft and fraud as a business process. The paper presents a small, independent study conducted to emphasize the validly of both the business process ideology and usefulness of the results. Closing thoughts are presented to speculate what the future of identity could look like and how consumers may need to use the information gathered from tools such as the ITAP to shape best practices. The goal is to be two steps ahead instead of one step behind. / text

Thesis (M.S.)--California Polytechnic State University, 2009. / Title from PDF title page; viewed on August 27, 2009. "July 2009." "In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree [of] Master of Science in Computer Science." "Presented to the faculty of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo." Major professor: Philip Nico, Ph.D. Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-57).

The continuing financial losses incurred by individuals and companies due to identity information being phished are necessitating more innovative approaches to solving the problem of phishing attacks at the company level. Security standards are developed by respected experts in the profession and are widely accepted in the industry. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a standard can be adapted to develop a framework that may guide companies in determining how to protect themselves against phishing attacks. A qualitative approach using design research as the methodology was used during the research. The data collection took place by means of a literature survey and semi-structured interviews. The artefact developed was a phishing-prevention framework based on the ISO/IEC 17799 standard, and the evaluation thereof took place through test cases. The findings communicated to the managerial audience was a set of recommendations as a further investment in their security protection against phishing attacks; the findings communicated to the technical audience was the successful adaptation of an existing security standard to produce a usable framework. Further research initiatives should extend the types of test cases that the phishing-prevention framework was evaluated against, and explore the use of tools for determining compliance with the framework. / Theoretical Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)

3 pp. / The publication covers protecting yourself from identity theft. It covers how identity theft happens and ways to protect yourself from identity theft. It also gives you some steps to take if you are a victim of identity theft as well as identity theft contact information.

Revised; Originally Published: 2007 / 3 pp.

Individuals, organizations, and devices are now interconnected to an unprecedented degree. This has forced identity risk analysts to redefine what “identity” means in such a context, and to explore new techniques for analyzing an ever expanding threat context. Major hurdles to modeling in this field include the inherent lack of publicly available data due to privacy and safety concerns, as well as the unstructured nature of incident reports. To address this, this report develops a system for strengthening an identity risk model using the text mining of news stories. The system—called NewsFerret—collects and analyzes news stories on the topic of identity theft, establishes semantic relatedness measures between identity concept pairs, and supports analysis of those measures through reports, visualizations, and relevant news stories. Evaluating the resulting analytical models shows where the system is effective in assisting the risk analyst to expand and validate identity risk models. / text

Thesis (Ph.D)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Blough, Douglas; Committee Member: Ahamad, Mustaque; Committee Member: Liu, Ling; Committee Member: Riley, George; Committee Member: Yalamanchili, Sudha. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Computer Science, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-65).