A laptop had been stolen from the University of California at Berkeley in March, and stored on it was personal information on 98,369 graduate students or graduate-school applicants, including Hayes.
The breach -- which exposed names, dates of birth, addresses and Social Security numbers -- was widely reported in the media, and the school created a special Web site to help individuals who found themselves suddenly vulnerable.
In the months since, however, not a single case of stolen identity related to the incident has been reported. The laptop was recovered in September, and police believe that the thief was interested only in the computer, not in the information in its files.
"I have not seen any ramifications," Hayes said.
James Van Dyke, analyst, Javelin Strategy & Research
Widespread media reports have given rise to much misinformation and confusion around the issue. Many people believe that shopping or banking online increases the risk, for example, though the chances of fraud are far greater in the brick-and-mortar world.
Online and off
Just 12 percent of identity fraud cases last year occurred because the victim was active online, while 63 percent happened as the target used traditional channels, according to a survey by Javelin Strategy & Research, which tracks such data. The information is based on a survey in which 54.1 percent of ID theft victims were able to identify how fraudsters obtained their personal information.
"The most extreme forms of identity fraud are pretty rare," said James Van Dyke, an analyst at Javelin. He identified true ID fraud as those cases in which an individual used another person's name to take out a loan, apply for a credit line or even post bail after an arrest.
Moreover, in those cases when online consumers do fall victim to fraud, they find out faster and suffer much lower financial losses than victims who relied on more traditional means of interaction, such as paper statements from banks -- an average per incident of US$551 as opposed to US$4,543, according to the Javelin survey.
About two-thirds of what is reported as ID theft today is credit card fraud, which cardholders are protected against by federal law, according to Federal Trade Commission data released earlier this year. Legally, the maximum liability for a consumer in credit card fraud is US$50, but all major credit card companies have "zero liability" policies.
The FTC study found that most victims were able to solve their problems within a week. And even though credit card fraud is far more prevalent than full-scale identity theft, the aggregate of both categories is relatively small.
To assess the chances of falling victim to such crimes, consider these statistics: In 2003, 10 million U.S. residents were the victim of ID theft, according to the FTC; by comparison, in the same year, 20 million people got into a car crash, according to the Insurance Information Institute.
"Of all data compromises, only about 2 percent of the accounts that are compromised are ever used fraudulently," said Rosetta Jones, a spokeswoman for credit card company Visa USA. "You really are talking about a very small percentage of accounts that will ultimately result in fraud, which means very few consumers are impacted."
One reason for the persistent worrying over ID theft is the sheer numbers involved in many security lapses. Since February, more than 50 million personal records have been exposed in dozens of incidents, according to information compiled by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The causes of the breaches include hacking, lost data backup tapes, dishonest insiders, lost or stolen computers, and exposure of data because it was not stored securely. But when the number of ID theft victims for this year is tallied, there won't likely be a clear link with the data breaches, Van Dyke said.
"I would be surprised if we see a strong correlation between some of these massive data breaches and individual fraud loss," the Javelin analyst said.
But not everyone agrees. "Almost half the victims don't know how their identity was stolen. It really is not possible for industry people to state conclusively that security breaches don't lead to identity theft," said Beth Givens, director at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "ID theft is at epidemic proportions."
4%
4%
