Here's part 2 of an interesting article from Money magazine that lists several identity theft statistics -- many of which I found surprising. It's done in a question and answer format, so here is today's question:
What is the most common way your identity is stolen?
The answer:
Among victims who could pinpoint the source of ID theft, 30% blamed a lost or stolen wallet, checkbook or credit card. Dumpster diving, in which your personal info is lifted from documents you throw out, made up less than 1% of cases, down from 2.6% in 2004, as some 70% of people now shred paper files (keep shredding!). However, in 8% of cases, info is stolen out of mailboxes before you have a chance to shred. Since credit-card offers make it easy to open an account in your name, call 888-5-OPTOUT to stop unsolicited card applications.
My thoughts:
1. So, if 30% can be traced to a lost or stolen wallet, checkbook or credit card, 8% to stolen mail, and 1% to dumpster diving, what happens in the other 61% of cases? Am I missing something here?
2. I shred religiously, though it does create another problem -- my kids want to scatter the confetti all over the house. ;-)
3. We've stopped putting our flag up when we put mail in our box (out-going) and we usually pick up mail within an hour or so of its arrival.
4. I opted out last year and my credit card mail offers has dropped DRAMATICALLY. It really works.
Strange they left out what constitutes the 61% of other cases. I wanna know what that is too.
Posted by: Pragmatic Finance | May 26, 2006 at 02:37 PM
I've read elsewhere that a very high proportion of ID theft victims don't even know how it happened. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounted for a lot of the 61%.
Posted by: Katie | May 26, 2006 at 05:50 PM
Our mail man won't take the mail out of our box if the arm isn't up.
Posted by: fivecentnickel.com | May 27, 2006 at 12:22 AM