Identity Theft

Description
Occurs someone portrays them selves as being someone else, that is a real person. Either by hijacking that persons identity in a system or by creating a completely new identity in a system that imitates someone else's life.

Examples
Bryan Rutberg is a man who's Facebook account was hijacked. The hijackers, now posing as Bryan, changed his login details so that he couldn't access the account. They then made a post on his wall saying that he was stuck in London and needed financial help to get home. Some of Bryan's friends sent him some money to get him home. Google+ is a social media site that doesn't allow users to have fake names. If you as a user of the system encounters a profile that you believe is fake you can report it as fake to the system administrators. This is done by clicking on a link, "Report this profile", and you are then presented with the following choices:



This option was available the 18 of October 2011.

Facebook have a similar feature where a user can report/block another user. This is the alternatives that are presented to them:



This option was available the 18 of October 2011.

Pros and Cons
Having ones identity stolen is something all systems should want to prevent. So this is an anti-behavior that a system should not foster.

Relations
By giving users the possibility to create identities in a system the system also have to allow some mechanic to protect against Identity Theft. The hijackers of an identity can Targeting Insiders by Adding Devious Information onto the victims Activity Stream. This kind of hijacking as a lot in common with Misusing Other's Account but the purpose of the hijacker is far more devious.

Contributors
Created by Magnus Spånggård.