Considering the kind of damage that identity theft and credit card fraud can do to your life, many consumers want to know just how prevalent these crimes are.

Is identity theft becoming more common as criminals get more sophisticated, or are better security measures making it more difficult? Which demographics are at the biggest risk of financial fraud? And how much of an impact do data breaches have?

To find out, the Ascent reviewed the data to understand the trends on identity theft, credit card fraud and data breaches.

Summary of key findings

  • There were 444,602 cases of identity theft in 2018.
  • Those aged 30 to 39 reported the most cases of identity theft last year.
  • Georgia, Nevada and California were the top three states for identity theft by population.
  • With nearly 160,000 reports, credit card fraud was the biggest type of identity theft last year and has almost tripled between 2014 and 2018.
  • Almost 450 million records containing personal data were exposed through data breaches in 2018.
  • Hacking is decreasing, but was still responsible for 39% of data breaches in 2018.

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