As the use of the Internet for commercial transactions grows, so do the incidents of identity (ID) theft and related fraud. Computer security incidents involving the collection of personal information and other credentials of individuals for criminal purposes are reported frequently and they have a significant impact on people's trust in on-line transactions and electronic commerce. Confronting this type of information technology (IT) fuelled crime is therefore significant, especially in environments where IT artefacts and developments are adopted at a slower pace by the general public.

In this respect, Computer Forensics is an emerging discipline that provides a crime deterrent and plays a critical role in the investigation of similar cases. In this lecture we first present an overview of the field of computer forensics and subsequently discuss the issue of on-line ID theft and the associated actions for its forensic examination.