EITHOS

INTRODUCTION

‘Over the recent years, online identity theft (OIDT) related frauds have grown at an extremely fast pace, and the increasing assimilation of digital technology in people’s lives raises both the opportunities for fraud and the stakes of failing to prevent it.  Europeans are growing less confident about their capacity to stay safe online, with 59% of Internet users thinking that they can sufficiently protect themselves against cybercrime, down from 71% in 2017’.

Thus, we have asked prof. dr. Papakonstantinou to shed light on EITHOS. What will make EITHOS unique?  Vagelis: ‘Online identity theft (OIDT) criminals employ a very wide and multimodal set of frauds, ranging from the remarkably simple to the complex and sophisticated. Even though Europe has made a great effort in protecting its citizens’ identity and providing safe digital identity management and secure transactions in a centralised manner, nowadays, there is no common way for Member States (MS) to identify identity crimes internally, and there is no procedure to report them centrally (at European level). Besides, very little is known about the needs and experiences of individuals, after they have realised their identity information has been compromised or misused’.

Thus, why is EITHOS important? Vagelis: ‘Also, research is still unexplored when it comes to the precise structure of the response system, its key actors and their interactions.  Research has indeed highlighted the emotional repercussions of identity crime, and that these are largely misunderstood by the criminal justice system and the community at large. Yet, affected individuals are more often met with dismissal-not responsible-rather than treated as genuine crime victims worthy of support’.

AIM (WHAT)

EITHOS will develop a novel Identity Theft Observatory System, empowering European citizens, Law Enforcements Agencies (LEAs), and policy makers to further contribute to the prevention, detection, and investigation of identity theft-related crime. It will provide a common gateway for identity theft information and intelligence in Europe, built on top of a modern technological back end, based on two pillars: (1) Inform & Educate European citizens through the observatory itself and via innovative awareness campaigns regarding the safety of their personal data and identity; (2) Identify & address the challenges that Police Authorities face against identity theft and develop a robust software toolset to support them and enhance their investigations.

METHODOLOGY (HOW)

The proposed system will provide easy access to information and intelligence about previous and current identity theft-related trends (such as the methods that fraudsters follow to steal information, personal data protection, or the ways that victims can be supported) through its front-end while offering a cutting-edge AI-based technological toolkit via its back end.  Additionally, the project will analyse the societal impact of identity theft and the legal framework under which AI remote technologies and e-evidence exchange can be achieved.

IMPACT (WHY)

Focusing on educating civil society and addressing the obstacles that hinder LEAs to efficiently fight identity theft, EITHOS differentiates from previous projects and other market solutions which often concentrate on digital identity management and secure transactions.