ID Theft: Don't Take It Personally

Forbes Magazine: Identity theft often feels less like a random act of fraud than a personal breach of a victim's secrets. But while consumers feel the sting from having their private data stolen, it's their banks that are increasingly picking up the bill.... That's one finding from an identity theft study released Wednesday by fraud analysis firm Javelin Research. The study, which surveyed around 5,000 Americans last year about their experiences with identity theft, calculated that ID fraud had cost around $54 billion in 2009, a significant jump from the $48 billion it estimated for 2008. That higher cost was driven by a greater number of fraud incidents that affected 11.2 million consumers in 2009, compared with 9.9 million in 2008.

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