Ashwini Kumar Shrivastava

New Delhi: As the cyber world unveils websites that let you live a second life, fake identities and identity thefts are fast emerging a menace giving spurt to hate mails and even serious crimes.

Identity theft remains unrecognised by many Indians, but many may already be becoming targets even without realising it, experts say. One of the fastest growing crimes in the developed nations like United States, it is spreading in developing economies too.

According to a website that monitors cyber crimes, in 2006, identity theft complaints made up thirty seven per cent (37 per cent) of all fraud complaints. With extensive use of social networking sites in India, the young population chatting for hours, however is unaware of the risks involved. Sharing personal information on social networking sites like Orkut, Tagged, hi5,etc. Can be hazardous.

The delinquents will have no difficulty in using someone s personal information for their vested interest, cyber experts say. There has been number of cases reported in the country where the people were cheated after sharing their personal information on Internet. Latest among them is one of a youth from Mumbai who was murdered, after pals on the net abducted and then killed him, having won his confidence through the network chatting.

Source : PTI