A blog by Martin Williams, external affairs spokesman of Graydon UK, focusing on business risks - from fraud to late payment. Martin has has spent the last 35 years in the credit information industry, and has been with Graydon UK, one of the top five commercial credit agencies in the UK, for the last 20. Apart from his PR duties, he teaches credit analysis to risk professionals and helps educate SMEs on the importance of maintaining a good credit rating. Martin is a Fellow of the Institute of Credit Management and is a sitting member of the Institute's Think Tank. He was also honoured by Credit Today, after being included on their Credit 100 list of people who have had the greatest impact in the credit industry during 2008, 2009 and 2010.
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03 Jun 2008
At least us Brits are not alone in facing an identity theft epidemic. In the USA, it's the country's fastest growing crime. The Federal Trade Commission in the States undertakes surveys each year and tries to understand why and how these crimes are being committed. On the surface, what might seem strange is that Arizona is the identity theft hot spot state in the union, followed by California, Texas, Nevada and Florida.
Commentators, particularly from the Right, point to the fact that these are all border states, where illegal immigration may be fuelling the theft of US citizens' identities. Others suggest Arizona is perched on top of the list because it has a large older population more easily fooled by pfishers and other identity thieves. It has also been suggested that Arizona has a high incidence of methamphetimine users, and that identity theft is a popular "non violent" way to finance drug habits.
London and the Southeast see almost 50% of identity theft crimes in the UK, whereas Northern Ireland sees only 1% of the UK total. Is illegal immigration the big factor here? Or illicit drugs? Is anyone in the UK doing similar work to the FTC in the States to try to understand the causes, or are we content just to record the statistics?
Visitor comments
We are working with a number of organisations on establishing the causes of identity theft. IDTP is attempting to be proactive hence we are partnering with a number of internet security companies to firstly drive awarenessa and education and then the solutions.
Most identity fraud/theft is linked to organised crime - Eastern Europe and Asia in particular. An influx of immigrants has not helped that situation. We do though know that identity fraud is on the rise and new trends suggest as we now have a global economy things will steadily get worse.
Julian
Posted by: Julian Evans , 03 Jun 2008
ID theft is also an interesting crime of opportunity, and is on occasion difficult to detect or prevent without going off the grid. There are some good services that establish trustedIDs or IDfreezes, and rope together a lot of the manual actions that can be taken by the consumer.
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