A couple or advanced references...

Tue Feb 19 06:46:05 UTC 2008

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:27:52 GMT
"Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg at netzero.net> wrote:

> And thirdly is a figure that some folks may already be aware of; the
> fact that identity theft was the number one source of consumer
> fraud complaints submitted to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission
> in 2007.
> 
> According to the agency's yearly report on fraud complaints for
> 2007, of 813,899 total complaints received in 2007, 258,427, or
> 32 percent, were related to identity theft:
> 
> http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/02/fraud.pdf
> 
> According to the FTC, total consumer fraud losses totaled $1.2
> billion, with the average monetary loss for an individual at
> $349.
> 
> Credit card fraud was the most common form of reported identity
> theft at 23 percent, followed by utilities fraud at 18 percent,
> employment fraud at 14 percent, and bank fraud at 13 percent.
> 
Right, but that may or may not have anything to do with the Internet;
see http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/identity_theft_6.html
(among many others).

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb