Identity Theft News

Survey: 7.5 percent of adults lost money in data breaches

Thursday, March 5, 2009

A research firm has released data showing financial scams accounted for 7.5 percent of adults in the U.S. to lose money, which was mostly due to data breaches and identity theft.

The survey, which polled approximately 5,000 U.S. adults, found that data breaches and phishing attacks against consumers were the post prevalent causes of payment card fraud, SCMagazineus.com reports.

Financial losses were highest with new-account, credit card and brokerage fraud with losses per incident ranging from $900 to $1,097 among the people polled in the report, according to the article.

One reason for the high rate of this cybercrime may be the low conviction rate for such crimes and that less than one-third of victims report their crimes to authorities, states the news provider.

The report comes six weeks after Heartland Payment Systems disclosed a potentially massive network security breach that has already affected more than 500 financial institutions.

According to the company, cybercriminals gained access to the payment card data belonging to an undisclosed number of customers. So far, a least eight banks and credit unions have filed lawsuits against Heartland citing the company's alleged failure to provide adequate security measures to prevent identity theft.ADNFCR-1765-ID-19059439-ADNFCR

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