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More efforts needed to fight online identity theft, says OECD
Governments, regulators and communications firms, such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), should do more to protect people’s personal information online and increase international co-operation to fight the growing problem of identity theft, according to a new OECD report.
The report on Online Identity (ID) Theft gives an overview of the ways criminals steal people’s personal information, as well as recommendations for industry and government to fight them.
Criminals are using increasingly sophisticated methods and techniques via the Internet to steal people’s personal and financial details, the report notes. These include malware, such as computer viruses, and phishing, where a fraudster solicits personal information via email or a fake website and spam.
Accurate data on the number of people hurt by ID theft and its financial cost are hard to collect, the report notes, but according to the 2006 ID Theft Survey Report by the US Federal Trade Commission, 8.3 million people discovered that they had been victims of ID theft the previous year.
ID theft or fraud is not a criminal offence per se in most OECD countries and a crime in only a few. The lack of criminal laws prohibiting ID theft and the limited resources of dedicated law enforcement authorities may mean that there is insufficient deterrence, the report says. Given the rapid evolution of theft techniques and methods, more resources and training for authorities and law enforcement agencies is vital.
Governments should consider making ID theft a stand-alone offence and criminalised, and put in place more restrictive laws that increase the penalty for ID theft. They should also develop legal definitions of the concept of ID theft to facilitate domestic and international efforts to prevent, deter and provide redress against such theft.
Establishing national standards for private sector data protection requirements and imposing a duty to disclose data security breaches on companies and other organisations storing data about their customers would also help.
National and international co-ordination and co-operation could be improved. Creating national centres dedicated to investigating ID theft crimes would strengthen national co-ordination.
Cybercrime and ID theft are among the issues to be discussed at the 08.30 roundtable, entitled “Building Confidence”, on June 18 during the OECD Ministerial meeting on the “Future of the Internet Economy”.
For more information, journalists should contact Brigitte.Acoca @ oecd.org or Peter.Avery @ oecd.org of the OECD’s Consumer Policy division.
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