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Identity Theft

Threats

Phishing Account Takeover (ATO) Data Breach

Fraudulent use of personal identifiers to impersonate a victim.

Definition

Identity theft involves misuse of personally identifying information (PII) to obtain benefits, access accounts, or perform transactions under false identity claims.

In plain English Fraudulent use of personal identifiers to impersonate a victim.

Why this matters

Why it matters: Large-scale breaches and phishing campaigns increase the availability of PII and enable downstream fraud.

Example

Example: Synthetic identity creation using leaked identifiers and fabricated data.