Once every four seconds, someone becomes a victim of identity theft. Recent data from Javelin Strategy & Research, which conducts extensive research and reporting on these types of crimes, estimates that total expenses related to identity theft have risen to more than $4,600 per incident, plus lost wages for the time it takes to resolve such issues.
Identity theft is on the rise:
- Identity fraud increased to 4.90% in 2011 from 4.35% in 2010, representing a 12.6% increase
- The total number of identity fraud victims increased to about 11.6 million U.S. adults in 2011, compared to 10.2 million victims in 2010
- New account fraud, which is the misuse of the victim’s personal information to open fraudulent new accounts, produces the highest mean fraud amount and consumer cost
- LinkedIn and Google+ users have the highest incidence of fraud of all social networks
- 47% of identity theft victims encounter credit problems
- Smartphone users are one third more likely to become victims than non-users
- Victims of data breaches are 9.5 times more likely to experience Identity Theft
Provide your customers with the solution to this growing problem, while creating a recurring revenue opportunity for your business.
Sources: Javelin Strategy & Research
