Identity theft (or identity fraud) is the deliberate assumption of another person's identity, usually to gain access to their finances or frame them for a crime. Less commonly, it is to enable illegal immigration, terrorism, espionage, or changing identity permanently. It may also be a means of blackmail, especially if medical privacy or political privacy has been breached, and if revealing the activities undertaken by the thief under the name of the victim would have serious consequences like loss of job or marriage. While identity theft appears to cover the entire waterfront of bad acts done while pretending to be someone else, assuming a false identity with the knowledge and approval of the person being impersonated, such as for cheating on an exam, is not considered to be identity theft. Because identity theft is so broad a concept any discussion of it should quickly narrow down to the specific case like credit card fraud. Likewise any proposed remedy of identity theft is in actuality a remedy for a specific case of identity theft, with the unachieveable exception of 100% perfect verification like biometrics.

Techniques for obtaining identification information range from the crude, such as stealing mail or rummaging through rubbish (dumpster diving in the USA), stealing personal information in computer databases, to infiltration of organizations that store large amounts of personal information.

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