Identity Theft Tops FTC Consumer Complaints in 2008

   

Posted: Feb 27, 2009

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released its list of top consumer complaints from last year, and identity theft led the way by a large margin.

The FTC investigates a wide variety of fraud and consumer cases each year, having received more than 1.2 million complaints last year. Twenty-six percent of those complaints — 313,982 in all — involved identity theft.

A breakdown of the identity theft numbers found that 20 percent of the complaints involved consumer credit card fraud, while 15 percent involved government benefits fraud. Another 15 percent of the cases involved employment fraud, 13 percent were for phone and utilities fraud, 11 percent involved bank fraud, while the remaining four percent of complaints were for loan fraud.

Reflecting the state of the economy, the second-largest volume of FTC complaints last year involved third-party and creditor debt collection.

Previous media reports have noted an upswing in consumer complaints about the methods used by some unscrupulous collectors, who are otherwise limited by federal law as to when and where they can call a person and the kind of language they can use.