Identity theft on the rise in the UK

More than half of the UK's population is worried about identity fraud and bin raiding, yet only one in ten people are shredding personal documents before disposing of them, according to recent research from MORI Social Research Institute.

Detective Chief Superintendent Ken Farrow, head of the City of London Police Fraud Squad and chairman of the ACPO National Working Group on Fraud estimates fraud accounts for losses of £14bn to the UK economy annually.

'In 2003, credit card fraud losses alone were over £402m, as a result of theft, counterfeiting and other types of card crime,' said Farrow.

'A substantial proportion of those losses, some £29.7m, were incurred because the cardholders' identities and other personal data were copied from the cards themselves or from documentation carelessly discarded.'

Analyst firm Forrester says financial services firms are unwittingly playing a role in enabling identity theft from their customers but are refusing to accept their role in the issue.

While banks are well aware of the problem that phishing and other forms of identity theft are eroding customer's confidence online, their efforts to counter the scams are anaemic.

Forrester analyst Jonathan Penn says customer-facing measures typically consist of education campaigns and hotlines for reporting fraudulent activity.

'Ordinary interactions with customers do not seem to have changed at all,' he said.

Penn says firms haven't realised that their current practices actually contribute to the effectiveness of identity theft and fraud scams.

'If financial services companies never asked for personal information in unsolicited communications, then consumers would be suspicious when receiving them and phishing attacks would be far less successful,' he said.

In the report, Forrester outlines a number of recommendations for expanding anti-fraud issues, including a rethink of how firms communicate with customers, more extensive education efforts and the protection of accounts with strong authentication.

According to the report, identity theft costs business and consumers $50bn to $60bn a year in the US, with banking-related activity accounting for 56 per cent of the reported incidents.

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