A survey of consumers and businesses conducted in November, 2009 showed that while many consumers are monitoring their accounts more frequently using technologies such as on-line banking and mobile alerts, consumer education on protection and prevention measures such as keeping anti-virus software up to date will continue to be important.

Increased vigilance by consumers, businesses and government agencies appear to be having an impact on the problem of ID theft protection. Many organizations, especially banks and financial institutions have started offering fraud monitoring services, which can sometimes detect account access and payment anomalies, as well as dispute resolution and identity theft education programs. The survey determined that efforts to safeguard information by individuals and businesses have helped in resolving cases more quickly and have reduced the overall costs of identity theft for the consumer.

More consumers than ever before are actively monitoring their credit and financial accounts for suspicious activity and fraud and are acting faster when identity theft is detected.

With the exception of consumers aged 18 – 24, many consumers are found to be more likely to monitor their accounts regularly, to take advantage of ID theft protection programs offered by financial institutions and to install protective computer software on their home computers.

Many banks have offered customers more ID theft protection tools to safeguard electronic and traditional banking.

Financial institutions are investing in identity fraud monitoring, software to detect account access and payment anomalies, as well as complaint resolution and education services.

Consumers have become increasingly aware of e-mail scams such as “phishing.”, and less likely to respond to e-mail requests for personal information.

The use of mobile devices allows consumers to review and report cases of identity theft in close to “real-time,” which may result in lower victim costs and faster incident detection times.

The 2010 Identity Fraud Survey Report was conducted using telephone interviews with more than 5,000 U.S. consumers to identify and track the methods used by criminals and the impact of identity theft on American consumers and businesses. Almost 4,800 U.S. adults, including 487 victims of identity theft, were surveyed.

Tags: id theft, Identity Theft, LifeLock

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