February 07, 2007 (IDG News Service)
Identity theft remained top of mind among U.S. consumers last year, but
complaints about Internet auction fraud dropped noticeably, according to
data released Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
More than a quarter of a million ID theft complaints were lodged with the
agency last year, accounting for 36% of the 674,000 complaints the FTC
received. That number is down slightly from 2005, when ID theft accounted
for 37% of all complaints.
This marks the seventh consecutive year that identity theft has been ranked
No. 1. The second-largest number of complaints, 7%, came from consumers who
were unhappy with products they had ordered from catalogs.
Internet-related complaints were up, too. According to the 2006 data, they
made up 60% of all fraud complaints. Last year, they accounted for 46%.
But one area of Internet fraud declined noticeably: Internet auctions. In
last year's report, complaints relating to products purchased on online
auction sites like eBay made up 12% of the FTC submissions. In the 2006
numbers released Wednesday, that number had plummeted to 5%.
The FTC has made identity theft a priority over the past few years, and the
agency maintains a
Web site where consumers
can learn how to protect themselves and file complaints if they've been
victimized. The FTC is also one of the agencies heading up the U.S.
government's
Identity Theft Task Force,
created by President George Bush in 2006.
"It's not surprising to me that identity theft is No. 1 because we're the ID
theft clearinghouse," said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras.
The fact that the FTC saw a slight drop in the percentage of its complaints
that related to ID fraud appears to back up a downward trend reported last
week by Javelin Strategy & Research.
The research firm said that ID fraud was down in the U.S., with the cost of
this type of crime dropping 12% in 2006.
The FTC stressed that its consumer complaints data is merely anecdotal.
However, the agency is working on a more rigorous study of identity fraud
trends, and is expected to release that data in the coming months.
Majoras said it was unclear whether ID fraud is increasing, but she hopes
that the Javelin numbers are right.
Her sister was the victim of identity theft recently, after falling prey to
a phishing attack, she said.
"I said to her, 'You can't fall for stuff like that,'" she said.—