Can People Seal Your Identity ?

Be careful when you give your your name, IC and other details online - you might be a the next victim of identity thieves.

Although ID theft is hardly talked about in Malaysia, but there have been many cases reported in the newspapers - stories where old people who discover someone has been withdrawing their EPF savings, families who are told their land has been registered under someone else's name and people who discover someone has been using their name to take loans.

In the past, an indentiy thief would steal from your post box, visit various agencies to get copies of documents and do lots of other labour-intensive work. Today, with computerisation, they can just hack into a computer system and get whatever information they want.

The easiest and most effective way to get someone to provide their personal details (by filling out a form) is to offer a freebie via a website. In return for filling out a form, you are given a magazine, a discount card etc.

Ethical companies will keep customers information to confidential, but unethical companies sell this information to third parties.

Read the full story in the Star

Useful websites:

To report suspicious, criminal activities online, or are just curious to know about current online scams affecting Malaysian computer users, visit MyCERT

University of Michigan reveals how you can recognise ID theft scams online - visit this site.

Scambusters discloses how popular scams work and how you can avoid the usual traps - visit Scambusters.


Please post any information you have about this. Thanks.