Released: February 09, 2007

Is ID theft really declining?

Source: Martin H. Bosworth, Consumer Affairs.com

The financial services industry, hoping to befuddle the new Congress, has been busily laying down a smokescreen claiming that identity theft is on the wane.

But the Federal Trade Commission’s latest compilation of consumer complaints and a survey by the National Crime Prevention Council should do much to clear the air.

The FTC’s complaint list was dominated by - guess what? - identity theft and fraud issues for the seventh year in a row. Identity theft complaints to the FTC totaled nearly 250,000, a whopping 36 percent of the total number of complaints the agency received in 2006.

Credit card fraud was the most pervasive form of identity theft at 25 percent, followed by utilities/phone fraud (16 percent), bank fraud (16 percent), and employment fraud (14 percent).

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