The Center for Identity Management & Information Protection (CIMIP) published a whitepaper on identity fraud last month. The project assessed 517 US Secret Service cases between 2000 - 2006 with an identity theft/fraud component. The study focused on known thieves and their methods, versus previous studies which looked at victims.

According to the study, most identity thieves are young, work alone, and rely on the Internet for less than one fifth of their crimes.

Findings from the study:

• less than 20% of identity theft crimes are committed online
• the most frequently used non-technological theft method was to reroute mail through address change cards (mail theft & dumpster diving cited after that)
• 61% of thieves stole fragments of personal information rather than entire documents
• 33% of identity thieves are ‘insider’ employees (mostly retail)
• 66% of identity theft cases were concentrated in the Northeast and South
• 42.5% of thieves were age 25-34 ; 18% between 18 - 24
• 66% of identity thieves were male
• 80% of the cases were solo operations or involved a single partner

There is a lot to learn from this study. Identity thieves are more than capable of piecing together your identity from scraps of personal information - so protect that information in secure locations or shred it. Since most theft is perpetrated by strangers, be wary of opportunistic thieves.

“We have to know more about the crime in order to fight it. This will help law enforcement understand the problem and it will help consumers better understand the risk.”

You can download the whitepaper here.

Via Associated Press Tags: identity theft, identity fraud, fraud, id theft