Javelin Research: Fraud on the Rise Posted by AVCU on 5:01 PM

Javelin Strategy & Research released a study this week in which they report that over 11.5 million U.S. adults were victimized with identity fraud in 2011.  The findings are reported in Javelin's 2012 Identity Fraud Report: Social Media and Mobile Forming the New Fraud Frontier. Here are highlights from the report:

• In 2011 identity fraud increased 13% over 2010, but the dollar amount stolen remained the same.
• Consumer out-of-pocket expense due to fraud has decreased 44% since 2004 due to improved prevention and detection tools and fraud alerts.
• Certain social media and mobile phone behaviors have higher rates of fraud. LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and Facebook users had the highest incidence of fraud, but there's no proof of those products being the cause.
• Despite warnings, consumers still share a significant amount of personal information frequently used to authenticate a consumer’s identity in social networks.
• 68% of people with public social media profiles shared their birthday information; 63% shared their high school name; 18% shared their phone number; 12% shared their pet’s name. All are prime examples of personal information a company would use to verify your identity.
• 7% of smartphone owners are ID fraud victims, 1/3 higher than the general public. The cause? 32% don't update to a new operating system when available; 62% don't use a password on their phone; 32% save login information on their phone.

One big contributor to the increase of fraud is likely the 67% increase in Americans touched by data breaches compared to 2010. Data breach victims are 9.5 times more likely to experience identity fraud than others.