Credit card frauds top the list of US identity theft crimes

According to data gathered by PreciseSecurity, the number of identity theft complaints in the US increased by 45% and reached over 650,000 in 2019. With more than 270,000 reports, credit card frauds represented the leading type of identity theft crime in 2019.

Identity thieves usually target people who don`t report suspicious activity on their credit reports and don’t regularly check for identity theft warning signs. In 2015, the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Sentinel Network received nearly 80,000 reports of people whose information was used for credit card frauds. However, by the end of 2019, the number of Americans reporting this type of identity theft crime jumped to 271,823.

The 2019 data revealed that Americans in their thirties were the most exposed to credit card frauds, with 74,572 complaints or nearly 30% of all reports in 2019.

More than 55,600 complaints were from people in their fifties, making it the second-largest age group in the total number of reports. US citizens in their twenties ranked in third place with over 43,000 credit card fraud reports in 2019.