ID theft levels on the rise

Some 15 million Americans were hit last year

ID theft is on the rise in the US

Approximately 15 million Americans were victimis by some sort of identity theft-related fraud in the 12 months ending August 2006, according to a survey by analyst Gartner.

The statistics show more than a 50 per cent rise in ID theft since 2003 when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported 9.9 million victims.

According to the Gartner survey of 5,000 online US adults in August 2006, the average loss was $3,257 (£1,690) in 2006, up from $1,408 (£725) in 2005. At the same time, the percentage of funds consumers managed to recover dropped from 87 per cent in 2005 to 61 per cent in 2006.

'Hackers are exploiting Internet auctions, nonregulated money transmittal systems, the ability to impersonate lottery and sweepstake contests, and other types of imaginative scams,' said Avivah Litan, vice president and analyst at Gartner.

'The thieves have also discovered the weakest links in the U.S. payments systems. Typically, the weak links are found among the five or more million businesses that accept electronic payments from consumers, and the consumers themselves.'

Electronic theft of sensitive information is a leading cause of certain types of fraud, including credit card, debit/ATM card and bank account transfer fraud. This is not the case with cheque forgery and new account fraud, where in-person data theft is the leading cause.

The average loss on new account fraud more than doubled from $2,678 (£1,340) in 2005 to $5,962 (£3,090) in 2006. Unauthorised charges to credit cards rose nearly fourfold from an average of $734 (£380) in 2005 to $2,550 (£1320) in 2006.

'Often consumers have no idea how criminals hijack their accounts and/or identities,' Litan said. 'They also typically have no clue if one or more of their personal attributes, such as their social security number, is used to piece together a new fictitious identity in a phenomenon typically referred to as synthetic identity fraud.'