« Previous Post | Blog Home | Next Post »
Gartner Drops Bomb: Says ID Theft is Skyrocketing
Posted on Mar 7, 2007 by Tom Fragala
Gartner issued a press release today about their forthcoming report that is going to take the noise up a notch in our space. It will delight a lot of people that want raw, scary statistics and stun others who hoped that consumer awareness and laws were making a dent. It will likely pit consumer advocates against financial services companies in the fight for the moral high ground.
Gartner's news release claims the “Number of Identity Theft Victims Has Increased More Than 50 Percent Since 2003.”
Approximately 15 million Americans were victimized by some sort of identity-theft related fraud in the 12 months ending in mid-2006, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc. These statistics represent more than a 50 percent increase since 2003 when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported 9.9 million American adult identity theft victims. According to the Gartner survey of 5,000 online U.S. adults in August 2006, the average loss was $3,257 in 2006, up from $1,408 in 2005. At the same time, the percentage of funds consumers managed to recover dropped from 87 percent in 2005 to 61 percent in 2006.
Incredibly, Javelin Research concluded recently, in their 2007 Identity Fraud Survey Report, that ID theft is decreasing:
“ID fraud is dropping because consumers, financial institutions and the government are improving in their efforts to fight fraud,” said James Van Dyke, president and founder of Javelin Strategy & Research.
Commence fireworks. Actually, I hope Javelin responds and there is a dialog started about this. But I expect that most of the press and companies that sell ID theft services won’t care about delving into the details. They will just jump on the 15 million victims number, which very well may be accurate (or as accurate as one can hope). I predict in 2007, that 15 million victims will become the new de facto data point used by everyone.
However, in the first 10 seconds of reading the Gartner news release, I noticed something questionable in Gartner’s claims. In claiming a 50 percent increase, they base that on comparing their own 2007 survey to the old 2003 FTC report (which everyone loves to quote) of 9.9 million victims. It seems like a substantial error to compare the Gartner survey’s data to the data from the FTC, which is different in so many ways. The FTC data is based on consumer complaints received via the web, phone and email from victims or potential victims in 2002. Gartner did a survey of 5,000 people. (Oh and lest everyone forget, the FTC report in 2003 was not a 1 year study, but an extrapolation on a 6 month data set).
Now, I am NOT refuting the entire Gartner study. I am just surprised that they led with the headline of a 50 percent increase based on comparison between two very different data sets and sources.
Update: The 2003 FTC report I refer to which has the 9.9 million victim number, is actually from a survey they did and not data from consumer complaints.
Filed under: Credit, Identity Theft
Tags: gartner, identitytheft, idtheft
Comments
Post a Comment