U.S. identity theft losses fall: study
196938
Americans lost about $49.3 billion in 2006 to criminals who stole their identities, an 11.5 percent decline that may reflect increased vigilance among consumers and businesses, a study released on Thursday shows.
764890
Identity thieves are typically young, work solo and rely on the Internet for fewer than one-fifth of their crimes, according to a new study of Secret Service cases.
198702
US consumers made more than 600,000 complaints of fraud in 2004 with two in five concerning ID theft, official figures suggest.
96007
Senators aim to tighten cybercrime law Senators on both sides of the House have backed a bill that would allow American victims of identity theft to seek restitution for the money and time they waste repairing their credit histories.â¦
556072
New York, California, Nevada and Arizona are among the riskiest U.S. states for ID theft, while Wyoming, Vermont, Montana and North Dakota are among the safest, according to a study by ID Analytics Inc.
85636
The FBI said that 160 laptop computers were lost or stolen in less than four years, including at least 10 that contained sensitive or classified information -- one of which held "personal identifying information on FBI personnel," according to a report released yesterday.
66067
Identity theft complaints remained a top priority for  U.S. consumers last year, the FTC says.
434215
(InfoWorld) - Contrary to popular perception, computer data breaches are less likely to result in identity theft and other fraud than off-line causes such as lost or stolen wallets and checkbooks. That was the finding of a year-long study of about 5,000 U.S. consumers by Pleasanton, Calif.-based analyst firm Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin's research showed that despite recent hype, data breaches were responsible for just 6 percent of all known cases of identity theft, compared to 30 percent from incidents like losing one's wallet. The study also showed that less than 1 percent of all individuals whose data was lost later became victims of ID theft. Javelin's results are similar to those found by other firms that have looked at the relationship between data breaches and actual instances of ID fraud. In a Gartner study in 2005, for instance, only 18 percent of identity theft victims attributed the cause to computer breaches, while 41 percent cited off-line causes. Similarly, a December 2005 analysis by ID Analytics Inc. of four major online data breaches involving 500,000 customer records showed that less than 1 percent of those affected had their identities stolen. The numbers are important at a time when a spate of data breach disclosures has heightened consumer concerns and is fueling a debate among lawmakers about the need for more stringent data protection laws, analysts said. "There is a misperception that there is a one-to-one correlation between a data breach and ID theft," said Thomas Oscherwitz, vice president of government affairs and chief privacy officer at San Diego-based ID Analytics. In reality, "the mere fact that you are part of a data breach doesn't mean that you are a victim of ID theft," he said. The degree of risk can depend on the type of breach, Oscherwitz said. Data breaches involving a deliberate hacking, for instance, are likely to be much more risky than those involving a lost disk or laptop, he said. Failing to make such distinctions can push consumers to undertake unnecessary efforts to protect themselves and can impose burdens on corporations, said Mary Monahan, author of the Javelin study. "Our opinion is that consumers do need to be protected by data breach laws, and we do want to see a federal law to protect all consumers," Monahan said. But given the low risk of ID theft from such breaches, any such law would need to give the breached entity the opportunity to conduct a risk assessment before they are required to disclose it publicly; The absence of such a trigger could result in indiscriminate notifications. "And then all you get is white noise" that few people pay attention to, Monahan said. Currently, many of the 30-plus states that have breach disclosure laws require companies to notify customers of any data breach involving the potential compromise of personally identifiable information. Several industry groups have been lobbying lawmakers for a preemptive federal law that would add some sort of a breach notification trigger that is based on an assessment of the risk of ID theft or other fraud. Privacy advocates, on the other hand, have been arguing for broad disclosure, saying that few companies are likely to publicly notify consumers of a breach if they are allowed to make their own risk assessments. "I think it's always going to be difficult to make a conclusive cause-and-effect relationship between ID theft and data breaches," said Andrew Jacquith, an analyst at Yankee Group Research Inc. in Boston. So the real emphasis of any national legislation has to be on measures that companies need to take to protect sensitive customer data, he said. Also important is the need to examine issues like the continuing use of Social Security numbers as identifiers by a large number of companies, Jacquith said. "I view nonpublic information as radioactive material that needs to be protected [from leaks]," he said. "It's material that you can use to manufacture identities with."
608829
One of the most common forms of identity theft involves illegal immigrants using fraudulent Social Security numbers.
757324
Next Monday, researchers plan to release the first-ever analysis of U.S. Secret Service case information on identity theft.The study provides new information about the victims of ID theft as well as the criminals and the methods they use, according to Gary Gordon, executive director of Utica College&#39;s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection (CIMIP), which is writing the report.&quot;CIMIP was interested in filling gaps in the knowledge about identity theft and believed that an exploratory study of law enforcement cases with an identity theft component would provide some new information,&quot; Gordon said in an interview. This research is unique because it looks across all three aspects -- the crime, victim, and offender -- and across the lifecycle of the crime, from the time the crime was detected through arrest and the disposition of the case.&quot;This is the first time the Secret Service has permitted such a review of its closed case files, he said.The college has been working with a number of partners, including the Secret Service, IBM, and the FBI, since the Center&#39;s creation in mid-2006 to study the methods used by ID thieves and to help corporations and law enforcement prevent this type of crime.According to Javelin Strategy &amp; Research, identity theft cost U.S.businesses and consumers an estimated $49.3 billion in 2006.The study will be released Monday at a Utica-sponsored crime conference being held in McLean, Virginia. Utica College is a small private college based in Utica, New York, that offers programs in economic crime and fraud management.Historically, the Secret Service has been chartered with protecting the U.S. president and cracking down on counterfeiters, but in the 1980s its role was expanded, and it now investigates financial and identity theft crimes.Monday&#39;s study will include Secret Service data on &quot;insider threats, points of compromise, and vulnerabilities,&quot; Utica&#39;s media alert said.Representatives from the Secret Service were not immediately able to comment on the study.
612837
The loss or theft of personal data such as credit card and Social Security numbers soared to unprecedented levels in 2007, and the trend isn't expected to turn around anytime soon as hackers stay a step ahead of security and laptops disappear with sensitive information.
5343
Blog: Auditors say only a fraction of largest intrusions in recent years showed clear evidence of resulting identity theft, but they admit that's not always easy to gauge.
403358
New Yorkers, especially around New  York City, and Californians, especially around Los Angeles, are  more likely to be targets of identity theft, according to a new  study.
571540
The Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act would provide protection for consumers who fall victim to identity theft.
674383
Thousands of Wells Fargo &amp; Co. mortgage and student-loan customers might be at risk for identity theft after four computers were stolen in October from a vendor that prints loan statements.
547003
If you&#39;re a convicted identity thief, you&#39;ve got about a 50 percent chance of avoiding jail time.That&#39;s one of the findings of a new study of closed U.S. Secret Service case files, released Monday by Utica College&#39;s Center for Identity Management and Information Protection. This is the first time researchers have been allowed to sift through the Secret Service&#39;s data. The study&#39;s authors based their findings on an&#160;analysis of 500 closed Secret Service cases.&quot;Prosecutors had a slightly better chance of sending a convicted identity thief to prison than not (51 percent) and could expect to see the imprisoned offender sentenced to three years or less of incarceration,&quot; the report said.The college has been working with a number of partners, including the Secret Service, IBM, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, since the Center&#39;s creation in mid-2006 to study the methods used by ID thieves and to help corporations and law enforcement prevent this type of crime.Technology like printers, mobile phones, and computers were used in about half of the cases, but the Internet was the exclusive tool of ID thieves only about 10 percent of the time.Identity theft is concentrated in the northeastern and southern United States, the study found. And the majority of the offenders in the Secret Service cases were African-American; more than two-thirds of all offenders were male.The study also found that ID thieves tended to hit people that they did not know, rather than preying on friends and relatives. A family member or friend was the victim in 16 percent of cases. In about a third of the cases, the theft was an inside job, with the data being stolen from an employer.Identity theft is a well-studied phenomenon, but it&#39;s unusual for a survey to be based on this kind of closed-case data. &quot;This study is significant because it did not depend on self-reported or survey data,&quot; the authors wrote.The median loss from identity theft was just over $31,000, but in one case, investigated by the Secret Service&#39;s Dallas field office, the defendant spent millions on luxury vehicles and then managed to set up shell companies and defraud investors. Total losses: $13 million. &quot;In general,&quot; however, &quot;the more offenders involved in the case, the higher the victim loss,&quot; the study stated.According to Javelin Strategy &amp; Research, identity theft cost U.S.businesses and consumers an estimated $49.3 billion in 2006.&#160;
259841
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will wade into an emerging debate on the nature of identity crime when it releases its latest ID theft statistics at the RSA Conference in San Francisco next week. The data, set to be released on Wednesday, will be based on information compiled by the FTC's Consumer Sentinel complaint database, said Claudia Bourne Farrell, an FTC spokeswoman. The Consumer Sentinel data is based on "anecdotal ... data that has been self-reported to the FTC by consumers," Farrell said. The FTC is preparing a more comprehensive ID fraud survey, similar to one it published in 2003, which is expected to be released in the coming months. Still, the FTC's Consumer Sentinel report is based on a large amount of data. In 2005, for example, consumers logged more than 650,000 complaints, accounting for about $680 million in losses. The FTC's numbers will come at a time when there is some debate about whether ID theft is actually on the rise. Using a methodology developed for the 2003 FTC survey, Javelin Strategy & Research reported Thursday that this type of fraud actually dropped in 2006. The total cost of identity fraud was down 12 percent last year, totalling $49.3 billion in losses, according to Javelin. Nationwide, there were about 500,000 fewer victims, year-over-year, the research company said. Javelin's results run "contrary to all the trends we are seeing in the market," said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan. "In fact, the U.K. banks just released a study showing their identity theft-related fraud is up nearly 20 percent," she said.