Risk Kit: Highlighting Vulnerable Identity Assets for Specific Age Groups

Identity theft is perhaps the defining crime of the information age. Identity theft threatens various demographics, but some age groups, e.g., senior citizens, are particularly vulnerable. In this paper, we study how identity theft puts different personally identifiable information (PII) assets at risk of exposure, and how this risk changes throughout one's lifecycle. We categorize PII assets, introducing a fourth novel category, measure their exposure risk using the Identity Theft Assessment and Prediction (ITAP) repository of over 3,000 identity theft cases, and track the risk change throughout an individual's lifecycle. We introduce the concept of PII Balance Sheets, and finally, we present a free publicly available Android app that demonstrates our research results. This app not only educates individuals and highlights their vulnerable identity assets, but also is useful when they make the decision of whether or not to share their personally identifiable information.