ID theft hits all time high, consumers shift blame to institutions

February 9, 2018 by Roy Urrico, CU Times

The 2018 Identity Fraud Study released by San Francisco-based Javelin Strategy & Research, revealed identity fraud victims increased by 8% (rising to 16.7 million U.S. consumers) in the last year.

The online survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers found despite industry efforts to prevent identity fraud, fraudsters effectively altered course to net 1.3 million more victims in 2017, with the amount stolen rising to $16.8 billion. The rising ID theft trend caused consumers to shift the perceived responsibility for preventing fraud from themselves to other entities, such as their financial institution or the companies storing their data.

With the evolution to EMV cards and terminal, the types of identity fraud continued to swing away from brick-and-mortars to online opportunities.