The crime of identity theft involves getting the sensitive and personal information of one or more people in an unauthorized manner. This information is then used to commit different acts of fraud as well as other crimes. The most popular and essential information for identity thieves is a person’s name, address, phone number, Social Security number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, other types of financial information, and passwords for any banking by phone or other computer assisted methods of accessing money or credit cards. Identity theft is now a Federal criminal offense in the United States. Identity thieves will often take jobs in locations where credit cards are used in order to have easy access to carbons with credit card information etched onto them. A thief such as this is not above quickly jotting down a card number as he or she takes a person’s credit card to the register from a table at a restaurant.