Identity Theft and Prevention

E-commerce users are exposed to identity theft, which is perpetrated in many ways: through unauthorized intrusions such as phishing, spoofing, use of a Trojan-horse, and injection attacks. Very few initiatives have been taken to introduce intensive measures to educate people about the dangers of identity theft. By employing theoretical integration, this research identified risk behaviors and protective behaviors that influence the likelihood of being a victim of identity theft and proposed a new model to minimize the occurrence of identity theft for e-commerce users. The model was evaluated using quantitative methods on 386 university students in Malaysia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to determine how 92 human risk and protective behaviors influence identity theft. The result indicated that offline risk and account monitoring are the most influential factors in the occurrence of identity theft.