Fraudsters stole $16 billion from 12.7 million US consumers last year—no small thing in the grand scheme of financial cybercrime. That means that there was a new identity fraud victim every two seconds in 2014.
According to
Javelin Strategy & Research, 2014’s numbers mark a decline of 11% from 2013, when identity fraud totaled $18 billion. Javelin’s 2015 Identity Fraud
Study found that the number of victims of identity fraud decreased overall by 3% in the year, from 13.1 million in 2013 to 12.7 million in 2014.
The firm, however, pointed out that an incremental decrease in victims doesn’t tell the whole story. Fraud can range from simply using a stolen payment card account, to making a fraudulent purchase, to taking control of existing accounts or opening new accounts—and have varying impacts.
For instance, victims of new account fraud are three times more likely to take a year or more to discover that their identities were misused compared to other types of fraud.
