Facts You Didn't Know Related to Identity Fraud

• It takes 467 days to discover that you are a victim of identity fraud (Experian).
• Personal information such as your date of birth, address, mother's maiden name and passwords are now as valuable as money. This could be enough information for a fraudster to open bank accounts, apply for credit cards, loans and much more .
• Businesses are being just as careless as households with sensitive information, with 79 percent of businesses making no effort to destroy sensitive material that is thrown away or being prepared for recycling. Incredibly, companies are not just risking their own identities but also those of their customers and employees.
• 40 percent of businesses risk their clients identities by throwing away information on their customers which includes home addresses, phone numbers and photocopies of passports - all of which can be used by a criminal to steal a persons identity (survey commissioned by Fellowes).
• Current address (or present address fraud) accounted for almost half of all identity fraud cases reported to Experian in the second half of 2006.
• Card-not-present fraud is now the largest type of card fraud in the UK and accounts for nearly 50% of all card fraud losses, reaching £212.6m in 2006 (APACS, 2007).
• Police figures released in early March put the total cost of fraud at a minimum of £13.8bn. 45 percent of fraud investigations carried out by the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Directorate, SCD6, have an element of identity fraud. (Metropolitan Police, March 2007).
• In 2006, the cost of identity fraud to the British economy reached £1.7 billion, an increase of over 30 percent since 2002 (Home Office, 2006).
• Online banking fraud increased by nearly 45% percent between 2005 (£23.3m) and 2006 (£33.5m). (APACS, 2007).
• Fraud against financial institutions – card fraud, identity fraud, false cheques - has spiralled dramatically, up from £37m in 2004 to £360m in 2005 (KPMG Fraud Barometer, 2006).
• Fraud abroad rose 43 percent from 82.8m in 2005 to 118.2 in 2006 (APACS, 2007).
• 10,000 false passports were obtained by fraudsters in 2006 according to the Home Office declared. (BBC, 2007).
• More than 12 percent of British internet users fell victim to online fraud during 2006.
• On average users lost £874 each as a result of these scams (GetSafeOnline, 2007).
• Since 2001 more than 27 million Americans have been victims of identity theft (The New York Times, 2006).
• Online retailers could be losing over half a billion pounds in fraud according to a new report by prepaid card provider 3V and industry body, IMRG (IMRG, May 2007)

For more information on these and other industry statistics, please contact id3team@gb.co.uk.