Privacy researcher Pam Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum, coined the term medical identity theft and released the first major report about this issue in 2006.
In the report, she defined the crime for the first time and made the plight of victims public.
Obtaining an expungement of court records may also be required.
Someone can steal or misappropriate personal information without then committing identity theft using the information about every person, such as when a major data breach occurs.
A US Government Accountability Office study determined that "most breaches have not resulted in detected incidents of identity theft".
This is just one example of the kinds of impact that may continue to affect the victims of identity theft for some months or even years after the crime, aside from the psychological trauma that being 'cloned' typically engenders.
A variation of identity theft which has recently become more common is synthetic identity theft, in which identities are completely or partially fabricated.
The steps required to clear the victim's incorrect criminal record depend in which jurisdiction the crime occurred and whether the true identity of the criminal can be determined.