Analysis: How easy it is to commit ID fraud

His Colorado-based consultancy assists businesses with security assessments, including what Roberts calls "the human side of pen testing." In other words, he helps organisations find out which employees pose a security risk because they're likely to fall prey to social engineering traps and other cons.

"So we searched for the email address online were able to find a telephone number because he had posted in a public forum using both. On this forum, he was looking for concert tickets and had posted his telephone number on there to be contacted about buying tickets from a potential seller," Roberts said.

The phone number turned out to be an office number

The phone number turned out to be an office number, so now Roberts has the office number and an email. Roberts easily figured out where the office was located and phoned up and used a bit of social engineering. "We posed as a publicist and said we needed to get a hold of him. Using some information we got on the web, we got the office to give us his personal mobile phone number," Roberts said.

So now he has a mobile phone number, an office number, and an e-mail address. "I managed to do some more research and got an address which corresponded to a very nice house. Now I know the house, so I can pull public records on the property."