Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft Complaint Data

By Darrin Conroy -
This is a 92-page PDF file recently released by the Federal Trade Commission. It provides all kinds of data for 2007, summarizing the 800,000+ complaints of consumer fraud and identity theft received by the FTC's complaint database (known as the "Consumer Sentinel").

I've often wondered what the Consumer Sentinel contains regarding specific companies. This database exists as a tool available only to law enforcement agencies across the U.S., for use in any investigations that they might be undertaking.

Up until page 20, data is presented on a national level for a variety of categories (e.g., "Number of Internet-Related Fraud Complaints," "How Identity Theft Victims' Information Is Misused," etc.). The rest of the report focuses on complaint data broken down by state (New York is on page 53).

I've blogged about this before, and, unfortunately, I'll feel compelled to blog about next year, too. Be careful out there.

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