Research Paper on:
Identity Theft

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
new cars and homes based on what their credit report says. A few dings, and people end up paying a point or two higher in terms of a mortgage rate,  something that can translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of thirty years. With real problems, people can pay exorbitant amounts of interest. Not only that, but  bad credit can prohibit one from even having a cell phone, something that is necessary in todays world. Prepaid cellular is prohibitively expensive but is all that one with poor  credit can access. Further, bad credit can ruin ones chances for getting a new job, and while all of these things can happen to people who do not pay their  bills on time for one reason or another, it can happen to people with excellent credit practically overnight. Something called identify theft has rendered the social security number sacred.  Indeed, if thieves were to get hold of ones social security number along with a driver license number and some other information such as an address and mothers maiden name,  they can apply for credit. The problem is that the thieves get the items bought on credit and the true owner of the identity gets the bill, at least eventually.  Unscrupulous individuals pretending to be someone else in order to access material goods is a growing problem. A student writing on this subject ought to point out that more  than 150,000 ("Identity," 2002, p.68) consumers in the United States had been victims of identity theft during 2001. The number of cases is expected to increase to more than 900,000  per year by the year 2006 (2002). In early 2003, the Wall Street Journal reports that the number of such cases had doubled ("Identity-theft," 2003). The average monetary loss per