• by Ray Schultz , February 6, 2018

The number of identity fraud victims in the U.S. rose by 8% last year to 16.7 million and the amount stolen hit $16.8 billion, according to a study by Javelin Strategy & Research, supported by Identity Guard, a privacy protection firm. 

Account takeovers tripled over the prior year, with total losses reaching $5.1 billion -- 120% more than the 2016 total.

In addition, 30% of U.S. consumers were notified of a data breach last year -- up 12% from 2016. For the first time, Social Security numbers were exposed more than credit card numbers at a margin of 35% to 30%.

Fraud is conducted in new ways. For one, it is shifting online away from physical stores. This is partly due to the use of embedded chip cards and terminals by retailers.

Card-not-present fraud is 81% more likely than point-of-sale fraud, with the greatest gap Javelin says it has seen.

In addition, while credit card accounts remained the most prevalent targets for new account fraud, strong growth has also been seen in the opening of new intermediary accounts, including email payments (e.g., PayPal) and other internet accounts (e.g., e-commerce merchants like Amazon), Javelin reports.

As a result, Javelin says, consumers are losing trust in institutions and are shifting responsibility for preventing fraud from themselves to their financial institutions or other companies that store data on them.

The study also found that:

• 6.64% of consumers were victims of identity fraud in 2017 -- a hike of almost 1 million
• 1.5 million victims had an intermediary account opened in their name, a 200% increase over the previous high
• Victims of account fraud suffered an average of $290 in out-of-pocket costs and spent 16 hours to resolve the issues, adding up to over 62.2 million hours of time lost last year
• 69% of consumers were concerned about fraud -- up from 51% in 2016, with 63% at least very concerned about data breaches
• 64% say breach notifications do little to protect them.

“2017 was a runaway year for fraudsters, and with the amount of valid information they have on consumers, their attacks are just getting more complex,” states Al Pascual, senior vice president, research director and head of fraud & security, Javelin Strategy & Research.

Javelin surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers for the annual study.