Losing everything in seconds

By Jessica Mendoza

Although they have been many victims of identity theft, there still a big part of todays
population that have no clue how easy it can be taken away. Researchers have come up with
some solutions they think can fix a part of identity theft, but for some reason they have not been
put into action. These involve fingerprinting analysis, face recognition, or vein recognition. I will
state the ethos pathos and logos of my topic and go into certain detail which will definitely catch
my intended audiences eye.
Credibility on this topic is not hard to point out. Identity theft has been seen in the oddest places
not only when it comes to stealing social security cards, debit/credit cards on retail stores, or
IDs. A newspaper article that I found called Latest Sites of Breaches in Security Are Hotels
stated, The intrusion into its systems was first posted by Brian Krebs, a security blogger, on
Friday, when he reported that the breach might have resulted in the fraudulent use of hundreds of
credit and debit cards used for payment at Marriott hotels between March 2013 and the end of
the year. (Perlroth, 2014). Makes it seem that not even hotels can be confide with your personal
information.

People can come to their breaking points when they
find out their identity was stolen, but canceling all
your credit cards and just sitting at home crying is
not the answer. You must complete a police report
and send it to all your creditors which have received
payments without your knowledge. It wont be easy
to get your identity back but there is many non-
profit organizations that are very helpful with these
situations. These organizations are not only for personal identity theft their also for business
theft.
Researchers have come up with various ways to solving identity theft but they have not yet been
put into action. Fingerprinting analysis, face recognition, vein recognition has been a few
solutions that have been written in many articles. According to Jain and Pankanti (2008)
Compared with a physical token such as a bank card or with the knowledge of a secret such as a
PIN, biometric traits are profoundly more difficult to forge, copy, share, misplace or guess. (pg.
78) This makes me think to what cost is the government willing to take these solutions into wait
or what will happen once their put into action. As everything it may solve a problem but cause
another one.
Identity theft has much more information than many think. Although this topic didnt catch my
attention for personal reason; which sometimes involve some family member being a victim or
involved in some way, I have always wanted to do extreme research on this topic.
Image retrieved from http://www.lighthousepropertyins.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/04/IdentityTheft1.jpg
References
Perlroth, N. (2014, January 31). Latest Sites of Breaches in Security Are Hotels. The new York
Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/technology/latest-sites-of-
breaches-in-security-are-hotels.html?_r=0
Jain, A. K., & Pankanti S. (2008). Scientific America Biometrics. Beyond Fingerprinting, (pg.
78-81)
http://www.cse.msu.edu/~rossarun/BiometricsTextBook/Papers/Introduction/BeyondFing
erprintingSCIAM08.pdf