Identity fraud rose 22 percent in 2008 from the year before, reaching the highest level since 2004, according to a report released on Monday by Javelin Research.
Of nearly 4,800 US adults who were surveyed over the telephone, 482 said they had been victims of identity fraud, the report found.
"Almost 10 million Americans learned they were victims of identity fraud in 2008, up from 8.1 million victims in 2007," the report overview said. "More consumers are becoming victimised by this serious crime, reversing a previous trend in which identity fraud had been gradually decreasing. This makes sense because overall criminal activity tends to increase when there is a recession."
While the number of victims is up, the cost to consumers is down. The mean consumer cost of identity fraud dropped 31 percent from $718 (£486) to $496 per incident, the lowest level since 2005. The report attributes that decline to fraud being detected faster, lower fraud amounts accrued, and quicker resolution times as a result of industry efforts and consumer education.
Despite the headlines phishing and hacking attacks get, most of the identity fraud still results from lost or stolen wallets, chequebooks and credit cards, according to the report.
Lost or stolen wallets represented 43 percent of all incidents where the method of access was known. That compares with 19 percent that occurred during a transaction, 13 percent for theft by friends, employees and family members, and 11 percent each for online theft and data breaches.
Also of note was that women were 26 percent more likely to be victims of identity fraud than men, Javelin Research said.
Talkback
Don't you folks worry your pretty little heads about identity fraud. We at Whitehall Inc. have got the perfect solution.
In the old days the identity thief had to scrape up vital details about you from all sorts of distributed documents and locations. It took a great deal of effort and not a little skill to achieve.
What we propose is that we will get you to bring all this information straight to us, so that we can put it on a single big database. We will then give access to the whole of the civil service, and indeed every other organisation paid by the public purse and also to every other member government of the EU. This will mean that literally millions of people across Europe will have direct access to it.
We will then issue the person in the record with a piece of plastic that proves conclusively that they are you. This way life will be so much simpler for you. If your NIR record has remained uncompromised then you have a way of proving that you are you. If someone else has picked up your record and subverted it to their own ends, that's fine too; they are now you and you are no longer who you once were, so it's still all good. Everyone can prove that they are who they claim to be without fear of contradiction ... except you of course, but then you aren't you any more so you don't count. You no longer exist, so we don't need to worry about you any more.
Job done !
Perfect :-)
This is a point I've made time and again, but people seem to visibly switch off and 'not understand' what you say. I wonder if the public have now become so mentally lazy they don't even start to think when faced with a statement that contradicts the official line.
: I wonder if the public have now become
: so mentally lazy they don't even start
: to think when faced with a statement
: that contradicts the official line.
It's weird isn't it?!
If you ask the average "Man in the Street" whether he thinks politicians lie and whether you can believe a word they say without serious corroboration and the answer will be heavily biased in the "They could lie straight in bed" direction. But for some reason, when it comes to a choice where you either believe that the politician is telling the truth or you believe that they are doing something that will be seriously bad for the general public and they suddenly believe every word they say.
I'm not sure it is to do with laziness to be honest. I think it's more a head in the sand thing. The idea that politicians will do their best to line their own pockets and boff the office staff is second nature in the public imagination. A news headline confirming this is barely even news these days. If however the news is that they're trying to construct a nightmare surveillance state with powers that would be envied by the worst of history's tyrannies and suddenly they couldn't possibly be doing this and their insipid and illogical denials are lapped up as absolutes. Maybe it's just to horrific to be internalised.
When in the street hawking no2id leaflets, the response is now more and more positive. A lot of people have clicked and have realised that it really is happening. However, the holdouts almost universally try and shout me down with accusations of scaremongering. They say that I am exaggerating and that this couldn't possibly be true. Not in England for heaven's sake !!
The best one was when I was accused of being unpatriotic by an old soldier .. I did talk him round though and he is now tub thumping like a goodun !!