From a study released today by Javelin Strategy & Research:
- Identity theft was up 22% in 2008 over 2007.
- The cost per incident is less than $500. That surprised me. I thought it would be higher.
- A category they term “crimes of opportunity,” such as stolen wallets or purses, are responsible for 43% of the cases. That surprised me. I thought it would be lower.
- Online access accounted for 11% of cases. That surprised me. I thought it would be higher.
- Women are 26% more likely to be victims than men. That surprised me. I thought more men would be victims because criminals would target men with the thought that men are more likely to have control and access over household finances. But that is apparently not the case. The study surmises that more women are victims because they are more likely to have lost or stolen information during in-store purchases.
- More than 10% of victims know the perpetrator.
- Finally, victims are discovering cases more quickly. That’s not surpring with all of the focus on identity theft the last few years.
Interesting. I have been so careful not to use the internet for random purchases, this makes me think I don’t need to worry about the internet as much as I do losing my purse.
Exactly Mary. We hear so much about internet identity theft, but it seems most scams still happen person-to-person and not computer-to-computer.
These results are very surprising. I, too, though the internet would account for way more identity theft than this shows. Does it take into account all the records that have been stolen from computer databases? You should always check your credit reports online periodically to stop identity theft as quickly as you can - at least once a year and preferably much more often.