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Younger consumers more at risk for identity theft

March 25, 2010

A recent survey has found that younger consumers – specifically the “millennials” who are 18 to 24 years old – are most at risk to become victims of identity theft.

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, the reason is that this particular age group doesn’t protect themselves enough, nor do they detect when something is wrong soon enough.  The millennials simply aren’t careful enough with their sensitive information, and they are not paying enough attention to their financial records to know right away when something is wrong.

The article says, “It takes young people an average of 132 days to detect fraudulent activity on their credit cards, bank accounts and other personal holdings, and those in older age groups average 49 days, the survey shows.  When their identities are stolen, millennials are victimized by thieves for an average of about give months.”

Five months?!?  That’s a long time to have someone posing as you and stealing from you.

The survey also showed that over half of the victims never figure out how their information was stolen.

This is a good lesson for all of us, regardless of age.  We have to be careful about protecting our personal information. 

  • Do not share personal information with anyone. 
  • Don’t ever respond to e-mails requesting your private information.  Many thieves use what is known as “phishing” to get access to people’s personal information.
  • If you are using a wireless internet connection, make sure it secured.  Identity thieves can actually “look” into your computer if you have an unsecured connection and steal your information.
  • When making purchases online, make certain you are using a secured site and avoid using public computers.
  • Check your bank and credit card statements on a regular basis, especially your bank statement.  This is easy to do now that most banks and creditors offer online statements.
  • Check your credit report on a regular basis and look for any unauthorized activity.
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Written by admin · Filed Under Credit Counseling 

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