The risk of online fraud is dif?¬?cult to estimate for the
end user, and this dampens the growth of a market that could
otherwise be as explosive as other Internet-related sectors, such
as social networks.
We have seen which threats we face and how those came to be.
In the remainder of the chapter, we explore how today??™s main
countermeasures fall short in providing a complete, usable, future-
proof, and widely accepted solution to the protection of
identity online.
Figure 1-3 Number of new phishing sites (from antiphishing.org)
28 The Problem
America and Identity Theft
Many of the examples and documentation found in security literature make use
of concepts and scenarios that are very familiar to the American reader but can
be somewhat harder to understand for an international audience. This perspective
box gives a very quick introduction to some of the main elements that will
help the non-American reader to understand the most commonly described security-
related scenarios.
The Social Security Number, SSN for short, is perhaps the most common encounter
in security examples and scenario descriptions. The SSN, introduced in
1937 for the purpose of tracking individual contributions to the national retirement
program, is today the key for accessing services.
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