3 in 100 households experience identity theft, study shows

WASHINGTON — An estimated 3.6 million U.S. households — or about three out of every 100 — reported being victims of identity theft, according to a government study that counted misuse of someone else's cell phone, credit card or personal information.

The figures released Sunday by the Justice Department differ from findings of a previous government study that counted 9.3 million victims of the crime.

The department said the most frequent victims of identity theft were households headed by people age 18 to 24; those in urban or suburban areas; and those with incomes of at least $75,000.

The study was based on interviews with members of 42,000 randomly selected households over the last half of 2004, said Katrina Baum, a statistician with the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The bureau defined identity theft in three ways:

• Unauthorized use of a credit card.

• Unauthorized use of an existing account such as a cell phone or bank account.

• Misuse of someone's personal information to open a new account, get a loan or commit some other crime.

Of the 3.6 million victimized households, the study said:

• An estimated 1.7 million discovered unauthorized use of credit cards during the six-month period. That is about 48 percent of households reporting identity theft crimes and 1.5 percent of all U.S. households.

• About 900,000 households experienced theft from other types of existing accounts, such as a cell phone account, bank account or debit-checking account. That is about a quarter of households with thefts and 0.8 percent of all U.S. households.

• Roughly 540,000 households said someone had misused personal information of someone in the home to open new accounts, get loans or commit other crimes. That was 15 percent of households reporting identify theft and 0.5 percent of all U.S. households.

The last category, and the rarest, is the one the financial services industry more often defines as identity theft.

"I think it's important to mentally distinguish between transactional fraud . . . (like) the unauthorized use of a credit card, and identity theft, which involves the misuse of information to establish new accounts," said Anne Wallace, executive director of the Identity Theft Assistance Corporation. The industry-funded group helps victims resolve fraud problems for free.