Real Estate Innovation

Critical Statistics of Identity Theft

It is important to understand that identity theft is a fast-growing crime. It is also important to know just how your identity can be stolen and how to protect against it. Try to keep as up-to-date as possible in this growing epidemic, and to know who is most likely to be a target.

Statistics for Identity Theft for 2006

Each year, the Federal Trade Commission compiles a list of statistics on identity theft. A breakdown of the most important statistics to know follows:

In 2006, there were at least 246,000 cases of identity theft reported. Credit card fraud was reported as the most frequent type of theft, with 25% of all reported cases. Evenly distributed at about 16% were phone and utilities fraud, employment fraud and other such categories.

According to the statistics, electronic transfer is still the easiest way to target someone for identity theft, even though it is fairly secure. Napa, California and Madera, California were the highest ranked cities for the number of cases of identity theft.

Bank account transactions, credit cards and wire transfers are the most frequently abused methods of fund transfer; the identity theft statistics indicate them at 20%, 30% and 23% respectively. Cash advances and money orders are the least used methods of transaction, and therefore the least vulnerable.

Online, identity theft can be committed under the guise of a company sending email. After all, email and websites are the most widely-used ways of companies communicating with their clients to advertise products or services. Often, identity thieves will set up a fake webpage, disguise it as a legitimate companys webpage and use it to gather email addresses of unsuspecting victims. This is known as phishing, and is a quickly spreading problem in Internet security. Most bank sites, such as Bank of America, will have what is known as a Sitekey, which is a special personalized image that appears for an accountholder who signed up for online banking. The Sitekey confirms that the browser is dislaying the actual site of the bank, rather than a false one.

The most targeted demographic is consumers between the ages of 40 to 49. According to the Federal Trade Commission’s collection of statistics, almost a quarter of all cases fall within this demographic.

These are the most important statistics to keep track of; if someone falls in the middle-aged demographic, uses the Internet frequently for business or conducts online banking on a regular basis, he or she should be especially wary, because they have been shown statistically to be the most targeted victims of identity theft.