15 Staggering Identity Theft Crime Statistics

Identity Theft Blog

1. Identity theft affected 10 million people last year, according to a 2009 Javelin Strategy & Research Center study compiling identity theft crime statistics. That’s up 22% from 2007.

2. The mean cost of identity theft per ID theft victim is $500, the Javelin study found.

3. According to the Javelin study, 71% of identity fraud occurs within a week of stealing the victim’s personal information.

4. Stolen wallets and physical documents accounted for 43% of identity thefts last year, while online methods accounted for 11%, according to the Javelin study.

5. Last year, the most common form of identity theft was credit card fraud, accounting for 20% of all reported complaints, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

6. Since the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel database was created in 1997 for theft, scam and other consumer complaints, it has collected more than 7.2 million reports of fraud and ID theft.

7. According to the FTC, Arizona has the highest per-capita rate of identity theft, followed by California and Florida.

8. The Justice Department reported that in 2005 1.6 million households experienced fraud not related to credit cards (bank account fraud, debit card fraud, etc.).

9. Households with incomes larger than $70K were 2x more likely to experience ID theft, according to the Justice Department.

10. Last year, more than 35 million records were stolen in corporate and government data breaches, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center Aftermath Study.

11. The Aberdeen Group reports that businesses around the world lose $221 billion every year from identity theft.

12. According to security company Gartner, 3% of all phishing scams are successful.

13. 57 million adults have been exposed to some form of a phishing scam, according to Gartner.

14. Of those 57 million, 1.78 million have become victims of a phishing attack, Gartner reports.

15. Every 79 seconds, an identity thief steals someone’s personal data, opens an account in the victim’s name and goes on a buying spree, according to Equifax and CBS News.