IDentity Statistics Update

This week I’m giving a presentation on fraud in the payments industry and how identity verification fits into the equation.  In developing my presentation, I’ve been researching and updating some identity related statistics and I thought I’d share a few of my findings:

• The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reports that the number of total records that have been breached since 2005 is now 346,512,902.  Remember this is the number of records, not the number of people, which means some unlucky soul might have had his/her information compromised several times while someone else not at all.  However, to give you some context, the US Census Population Clock reports that the U.S. has 308,834,197 people in it.  So really one could argue that it’s only a matter of time before everyone in the U.S. becomes a victim of some sort of data compromise.
• The #1 consumer compliant in 2009 was identity theft.  The FTC received 278,078 complaints, representing 21% of all complaints.  The 2nd ranked item was Third Party and Creditor Debt collection at 9% of all complaints with the total number of these complaints being less than 1/2 the identity theft complaints.  Sure, the FTC reports that id theft complaints are down 5% from 2008, but given 2009’s economic climate, the gap between these two complaints astounds me.

The Payments 2010 Conference is a little over a month away and I’m sure after it I will have many more interesting payments and fraud facts to share with you.  Just by glancing at the conference website, there is a high research focus on mobile and P2P payments.  If you happen to be going to the conference, stop by and see us at Booth #232.