15 Shocking Stats on Identity Theft (that May Put You at Risk too)

We have all heard or seen news about identity thefts and cybercrime, and may even know someone who has fallen victim to them. To paint the seriousness of the issue, here are 15 facts based on international surveys and research to remind us why we should be more vigilant in our daily online, and offline, habits.

1. In the time you took to read this sentence, (2 seconds), one US Citizen had his or her identity stolen. (1)
2. In the same time frame, an average of $15 had been lost to fraud cases, resulting in a yearly total of $16billion. (1)
3. In the UK, 88% of identity fraud cases occur online. (3)
4. The number of fraud victims under 21 rose by over 34%, the highest rise amongst all other age groups. (3)
5. Victims of Credit Card Fraud amounts to 32.7%, second only to Employment or Tax-Related Fraud, which is at 34%. (2)
6. Account Takeover continues to be one of the most challenging fraud types, with each victim having to pay an average of $263 out of pocket costs, and spending a total of 20.7 million hours to resolve in 2016, 6 million more than the previous year. (1)
7. 2 million more people are victims of fraud cases in 2016, a 16% increase from the previous year. (1)
8. Offline Consumers take more than 40 days to detect fraud, and incur higher fraud amounts as compared to other fraud victims. Being offline may mean they are exposed to lesser risk, but it also meant it takes a longer time to detect fraudulent activities on their accounts. (1)
9. 72% of fraud victims who are e-commerce shoppers were able to detect fraud within a week. (1)
10. Even though more and more consumers are moving online, fraud cases involving point-of-sale (POS) remained unchanged. (1)
11. Up to 80% of cyber threats can be eliminated by simply updating your computer’s firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware programmes. (3)
12. Yahoo ranked #1 on the list of worst data breaches, with over 3 billion accounts compromised in a 2013 hack. That is almost half of the world population at that time (7.1 Billion). (4)
13. Uber paid $100,000 to a group of hackers when at least 57 million drivers and customer’s data were accessed from the ride-sharing startup’s database, to prevent them from using the data and keeping the breach under wraps. (4)
14. Sony reported damage of over $100 million when 100 terabytes of data was stolen, a result of phishing attacks and social engineering. (4)
15. Hackers installed malicious software on POS systems in the self-checkout lanes of Target stores, compromising identities of 70 million users and 40 million credit and debit cards. The same malware was later used at a Home Depot breach, affecting 56 million credit and debit card numbers. (4)

As you can see, identity theft is no small deal, and is a crime that affects multiple parties. This is why companies like Xenchain has made it their mission to prevent more victims from falling prey to such crimes. Xenchain’s eKYC app combines super intelligent text identifiers, facial recognition and digital ID scanners with social validation to create a simple and seamless customer onboarding and ID verification process. Powered by the blockchain, Xenchain encrypts and stores users’ personal data on a decentralized public ledger, making it safer compared to traditional storage practice.

According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Identity & Access Management market is estimated for $7.94 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $20.87 billion by 2022, setting Xenchain in a strategic position to tap into a huge market.

Xenchain is opening their token presales now. Head over to https://xenchain.io to register your interest.

Sources:
https://www.javelinstrategy.com/press-release/identity-fraud-hits-record-high-154-million-us-victims-2016-16-percent-according-new
https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-identity-theft-and-cybercrime
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39268542
https://www.opswat.com/blog/11-largest-data-breaches-all-time-updated