Question

how prevalent is identity theft,how does it affect the victims presently and long term and what term and what are some of the issues in prosecuting the offenders?

Answer 1

How prevalent identity theft is:
About 14.4 million consumers were victims of identity theft and fraud in 2019. In the U.S. 33% of the adult population have experienced and have been victims of identity theft attacks. Also, one person out of five adults who has been a victim of identity theft experienced it multiple times.

How identity theft affects the victims presently and long term and what term:
The effects of identity theft on the victims last forever. It only causes negative effects on the victims. Victims may even end up living with consequences of the effect and clean up the mess their entire lives. The impact of identity theft on the victims lasts for months or years.

What term of effects and consequences experienced by victims of their personal information or details stolen depends largely on the kind of identity theft, they experienced. Some victims end up resolving financial and credit problems associated with identity theft.

The negative impacts and effects on the victims result in stress and disruption to his/her life until he/she resolves the situation. The negative impacts and effects involve:
* Financially: The victim would be required to dispute an identity thief’s activity in the victim's credit files and work with entities to restore his/her good credit.

* Emotionally: The impact triggers a host of emotional reactions in victims such as anger, shock, frustration, stress, sadness, would lose his/her peace of mind and even happiness. They may feel helpless.

* Physically: It also causes physical symptoms in victims. The effect may cause a threat to the victim's physical safety that could include, physical abuse, beating, stalking, physical illness, body pain, sweating, sleep issues, heart, and stomach issues, etc.

* Socially: Hackers could cause a victim's recognition, reputation, name, and fame or put their job on the line by using the victim's current accounts, creating new, and fraudulent accounts, posting fake news, incorrect information, and content pretending to be the victim.

An example would be, a thief commits a crime, however, provides your or an innocent person's name (whose identity the thief has stolen) to the police department, this is referred to as criminal identity theft, however, police and related authorities arrest you or the innocent victim, as a result.

Some of the issues in prosecuting the offenders:
Identity theft provides offenders the advantage of physical distance. This is a serious problem for authorities and victims who try to bring offenders to justice and charge or punish them. Also, jurisdictional issues further complicate the reporting of cases, investigation them, and prosecution of identity theft cases, and the creation and effectiveness of related legislation. Also, there is not any criminal justice agency that maintains a national database of the identity theft cases number that is reported to it or those that are disposed of by arresting the thieves and their subsequent prosecution.
* Many times offenders' identities are difficult to ascertain, as offenders mostly use many aliases or identities, thus confusing investigations.
* The exact same information obtained from many different sources consumes time and is difficult to track for investigators.
* As mentioned earlier, most of the offenders commit crimes using the identity of victims, resulting in the arrest of the victims.