ID Fraud

A loyal reader asks: How big is identity fraud online, what are the trends, and should I be concerned?

There is a lot of info out there on this. But here's a great synopsis by the nice folks at ITFacts.

3.7% of Americans were victims of identity fraud in 2006

Approximately 500,000 fewer adults in the United States fell victim to identity fraud in 2006 than in 2005. Of America's overall adult population, 3.7% were victims, as compared to 4.0% in 2005. This demonstrates a continued year-over-year decrease since data was first collected in 2003 when 4.7% of the adult population was victimized. In terms of total dollars, identity fraud in 2007's report dropped by an estimated 12% over the previous year, from $55.7 bln to $49.3 bln. New account fraud dropped from 1.5% of all respondents in 2006 to one% in 2007. When fraudulent accounts are opened, many victims caught the fraud more quickly utilizing online channels, such as the viewing of statements, resulting in average fraud amounts dropping from more than $10,000 in 2006 to $7,260 on average in 2007.

The overall adult population of the United States reported a fraud rate of 3.7%. Younger adults between 18 and 24 reported a much greater incident rate of 5.3%. Additionally, more than half of these victims reported knowing their perpetrators, which could include friends, neighbors or in-home employees, as compared to just 23% of overall respondents, Javelin says

***So consumers are getting smarter, financial institutions and others are improving their services in this realm. Overall, things are getting better.

Should you be concerned? Of course! Be careful. Purchase from reputable companies. Protect your information. Install a firewall if you don't have one already. Change your passwords regularly. Don't use obvious passwords. Be smart. One great service we use is one-time credit card numbers. They've been around for a while - but many people don't know about them.