One of the classes I’m taking at college is Women and Crime, and on our first day of class, our teacher told us that the most recent/fastest growing crime going on right now is identity theft. It’s funny listening to someone talk about what they think is the truth.
Not to say I’m some criminal mastermind, but I know that they should be given a lot more credit and shouldn’t be underestimated. Identity theft was “big” many years ago. It’s just that recently a bunch of wannabes got their hands on the information of how to do it and are doing it stupidly (which results in them getting caught).
It’s just like hacking. The “real” hackers know what’s going on a few months/years before the majority of so-called “hackers” that you hear about on the news. Once you hear about some new crime, it usually means the “real criminals” have moved on to something that the public won’t even hear about until a few years later, after they’ve exploited the crap out of it.
I just read recently: Charles Stein from The Boston Globe says, “…Soon, as technology advances, pirates will be able to ’share’ everything from books to HBO’s lineup to sophisticated software. That’s not a future we should embrace”. Hate to break it to you, but books, television shows and “sophisticated software” has been offered online for a few years now.
There are groups who have the technology to intercept a satellite feed while the show is beamed to local networks, so they can even offer a television show before it ever shows up on your TV sets. Last year, the first four episodes of The Sopranos had been ripped before the first one even ran. Digital copies of books are also available if you know where to look.
This is why crime pays. Everyone is so damn far behind.