Privatpersoners kunskap kring identitetsstölder på internet samt dess skyddsåtgärder

While the Internet use at home continues to increase every year there is also an increase in identity theft on the Internet. The fact that this has become a common problem in today’s society may be originated from our inexperience when it comes to preventing and managing various types of attacks. Individuals are not offered any safety training or similar like the employees of a company and must on their own acquire the knowledge concerning identity theft and its se-curity measures necessary for them to be able to protect themselves against the crime.The purpose of this study is to investigate what knowledge individuals possess regarding iden-tity theft on the Internet and the security measures that can be taken to protect their identity. The study seeks to answer what security measures individuals adopt to protect their identity and if there are security measures that they have knowledge of but choose not to adopt and in such cases why. A theoretical framework was developed through a literature review in the field. This was initially used as the foundation for the empirical study, consisting of personal semi-struc-tured interviews, and later in the analysis of collected data.The conclusions of the study indicates that the respondents possess knowledge about identity theft and the security measures that can be taken to protect their identity but that it in many cases may be regarded as inadequate. All respondents use antivirus software and firewall and adopt a secure behavior in the use of the services of the Internet to a relatively high extent. There are security measures that the respondents are familiar with but choose not to adopt and there are security measures that they adopt but choose to disregard occasionally.Validerat; 20140609 (global_studentproject_submitter