Available statistics on identity theft don't paint a rosy picture
When someone deliberately misappropriates your personal information with the intention of using it to impersonate you, this kind of theft is labeled as identity theft which in fact is a lot more dangerous crime than one might have imagined, especially as it can lead to very serious consequences for the victim. Through identity theft, criminals can use the stolen information to wreak financial havoc in the name of the victim who, for no good reason, would be held accountable for financial transactions that they never entered into.
Continually Increasing Numbers Of Identity Thefts
If you wish to learn about available statistics on identity theft, you should begin your search by checking out with the Federal Trade Commission or the FTC who keep track of identity thefts and unsurprisingly, the reported instances of such crimes continue to grow year by year. In fact, according to recent statistics on identity theft it has been found that as many as, it is believed, ten million Americans are robbed of their identities each year, and these same statistics on identity theft also reveal another mind boggling fact and that is that losses incurred by businesses as well as financial institutions totaled a staggering, it is believed, fifty-three billion dollars each year.
There is also bad news that these same statistics on identity theft reveal as it has also been found out that the most common form of identity thefts are the ones that involve credit card scams and frauds, frauds in communication services as well as frauds related to banks and even loans. Thus, you should be alarmed when you come to learn from such statistics on identity theft that criminals today are no longer your flesh and blood weapon yielding fiends, but are unseen and are also striking more and more often.
There are also many other available statistics on identity theft and one of them deal with identity thefts that are committed through what are known as phishing attacks which is a new worry for people because in this form of identity theft, the victim believes that they are dealing with a real bank or even financial institution while the fact of the truth is that they are being duped by a fraudulent site which looks just like the real one and which helps the identity thieves gain unlawful access to your personal details and financial information. What happens next is left to your imagination.
According to statistics on identity theft, phishing attacks have affected as many as, it is believed, 1.7 million people and the cost to banks as well as credit card companies total about 1.2 billion dollars and there were also, it is believed, as many as sixty million Americans targeted by such phishing attacks.
Thus, if you don't want to become another statistic of identity theft, you need to do all within your power to protect your social security numbers, account information as well as passwords and furthermore, you should also make sure that you shred documents containing vital information after first having committed details to memory to ensure that no unauthorized person can lay their hands on these documents.
