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Top1. Introduction
As the world population is increasing, number of Internet users, mobile phone users and email users is also increasing. World population clock, worldometer (2017) has calculated world population as 7.51 billion, whereas it was merely 3.68 billion in 1970. There has been an appreciable increase in the number of email users as well. As per the Email Statistics Report (Team, 2015), email users throughout the world are increasing at a rate of 3% since 2015 but Email accounts are increasing at 6% - 7% every year since 2015 (Team, 2015). This has been a trend to have multiple email accounts by individuals for personal reasons. A valid email account is primary requirement for all online transactions like shopping, banking, social networking etc., which drives the way for having multiple email accounts. Email accounts are not only used for interpersonal communication but also for many other online notifications and transactions as well. On the other hand, mobile phones have become an integral part of the society and they are serving as the primary technology interface, rather than being a mere communication device. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number of mobile phone users worldwide. Mobile phone users will reach 5.07 billion in 2019 from 4.77 billion in 2017 (Statista, 2017). This has steadily increased from 4.01 billion in 2013 to 4.61 billion in 2016. As per Internet World Stats (2017), penetration rate of Internet will reach 49.7% world-wide. This further leads to the increase in number of internet based applications.
Social media has emerged as another popular tool and large amount of personal information flows on internet via social media. This includes person’s profile photo, name, contact number, address and other personal details. All these are enough for a criminal to steal the identity of a person. Even though authorities are also vigilant for these thefts and are using different means to prevent these incidents to happen. Around the world, police is actively conducting surveillance and investigations for years to prevent incidents of identity theft. Even after that, the identity theft incidents are not stopping and many public politicians and figures fear such an impersonation attack. Many specific cases of social media and identity theft have been presented by Socialnomics (2016). The 2017 Identity Fraud Study (Javelin Strategy & Research, 2017) revealed that the identity fraud incidence rate has increased by 16% from 2015 to 2016 in United States. The study also found that fraudsters have successfully targeted two million more victims this year and the theft has amounted to $16 billion. This study has also found that fraudsters are moving to the online platforms and Card-not-present (CNP) fraud is significantly increasing. As the microchip equipped credit cards got introduced in United States in 2015, these cards are difficult to counterfeit. Hence, the criminals focused on new account fraud, where a fraudster opens a credit card or other financial account using a victim’s name and other stolen personal information. These show a very typical case of identity theft. Also, in 2016, thirteen percent of all complaints received by the Federal Trade Commission (USA) were related to identity theft (https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-identity-theft-and-cybercrime).