The Economic Crime Institute at Utica College was allowed to look through Secret Service files and they found some interesting real statistics about identity theft that tell a different story from what we usually hear. Based on their data slices:

8% of identity theft crimes are done by people who know the victim
36% of identity thieves are women. This is a higher percentage than most crimes.
9% of identity theft committed by stealing mail
$30,000 is the average loss
34% of the time, an employee stole the data used in the crime, most often one in retail

The article says one way to help stop identity theft is to report if you see people with multiple IDs with different names on them.

Study: ID thieves are strangers, often women [Red Tape Chronicles]
(Photo: d70focus)

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