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Identity theft – the most over-hyped fear of our time

A leading identity theft expert used the credit industry’s annual conference to show that the government has massively over-hyped public fear of the extent of identity fraud to sell its Identity Cards Bill.

He also warned the credit industry not to join the bandwagon by selling over-priced prevention products to over-anxious consumers, and to help combat the crime by supporting victims more readily.
Barry Stamp, Joint Managing Director of checkmyfile.com, presented to leading credit industry figures at the Institute of Credit Management’s National Conference.

He showed how the government’s estimated figure of £1.72bn worth of losses to the UK economy, caused by identity fraud, has been massively over-inflated. In particular, these include the costs of security checks for routine government functions and losses that reasonably cannot be included within the general understanding of identity fraud. This has whipped up public fear and in doing so is likely to obtain wider public support for the introduction of identity cards.

“The largest single component of the government’s £1.72bn estimate is £504.8m worth of losses relating to plastic card fraud, taken from the figures reported in April 2005 by APACS. Closer examination of the APACS figures show that losses from identity fraud account for just over 7% of overall card fraud, so the true losses are only £36.9m. This example is one of many that clearly illustrates how the government has used a creative approach to the definition of what is and is not included within identity theft losses,” said Stamp.

“Going on to include the £62.8m cost of the measures to counter identity fraud when processing passport applications, and another £34.8m for things like unpaid fines where the offender doesn’t turn up at court are further examples of how the definition has been stretched”. “In reality, identity fraud is a fast growing crime, but losses in the UK are probably running closer to £150m at the moment”.

Stamp warned: “While the risk is real, and consumers need to increase their awareness, there really is no excuse for the government to strike fear of falling victim to identity theft into consumers for political advantage. If the credit industry exploits that fear to promote over-priced identity theft protection products to replace waning income streams from payment protection insurance, then that would be totally unacceptable.”

“If the problem is as large as it is claimed to be, then I would very much like to know why Police resources have not been strengthened to combat the crime. Of the many hundreds of cases of identity theft that checkmyfile.com has reported to the Police, not one has been pursued to court action.”

“Any consideration of the effectiveness of identity cards should also bear in mind the state of some of our existing national databases.” says Stamp. “In the UK, our government just isn’t very good at collecting personal data or maintaining it, so what reasonable person might assume that the National Identity Register might be any different? In the UK we don’t even have a central point of reference to check whether cards or any other identification documents are lost or stolen, as exists in other countries, nor have I seen any plans to build one.”

Stamp, author of ‘Identity Theft, Prevention and Victim Assistance’, and whose company checkmyfile.com provides consumers with access to a wide range of databases, and supplies identity restoration services to a leading insurance company, urged credit managers who attended the ICM National Conference to follow the lead of some lenders who offer free identity theft prevention advice and to work together to combat the crime.

Philip King, the newly appointed Director General of the ICM, fully supports such an industry initiative. He said: ‘Credit managers working together have shown in the past that losses from criminal actions, such as mortgage fraud, can be prevented by sharing intelligence. Identity theft presents a very similar challenge to our industry and we now need to focus on addressing the issue professionally”.

Identity theft – the most over-hyped fear of our time / Richard Goedegebuur

Richard Goedegebuur is press relations officer with checkmyfile.com, the Uk’s leading online supplier of credit files to the consumer. The website also provides consumer credit advice, post code relevant information – such as area property prices, cheapest petrol stations, average credit scores for a post code, and a free stolen car checker.