George Bernard Shaw is not the only one to think, “Youth is wasted on the young.” Identity thieves are embracing this philosophy and targeting those aged 18-24 and stealing the perks associated with youth and fresh credit limits. A recent survey conducted by Javelin Research, indicated that members of the Millennial demographic are targeted more often then their older, more identity theft prevention savvy counterparts.
The Washington Post reported that according to the survey results, across the board identity fraud and theft has increased a whopping 12 percent over last year. In 2009, 11.1 million people were victims of the crime and endured total losses of around $54 billion. Luckily for victims of they crime, banks and credit card companies cover most of the financial burden making the out of pocket losses around $373, but it will cost victims around 21 hours worth of effort to straighten out the situation.
Why ID Theft is More Common Among Young Adults
It is believed that the young are especially vulnerable to the crimes as they are more willing to post personal information on social networking sites as well as not realizing they were victims of the crime until the criminals have done some serious damage.
According to the research, Millennials do not discover the crime for an average of 132 days since the first occurrence, providing the criminals around five months of complete, shopping freedom. Seniors (aged 65 and above) tend to notice something is wrong within 29 days while adults in between the two demographics have an average response time of around 49 days.
As always, it falls upon the older generation to help out the youth of America in regards to their identity theft protection. Some proactive measures Millenials can take to protect themselves are to:
- Keep Some Things to Yourself: A big percentage 93 percent of those aged 18-24 spend countless hours online. Since they were raised viewing over-exposed celebrities and were exposed to too much information they have been conditioned to do the same. By using common sense and keeping more of their personal information to themselves, it will be harder for them to be victimized.
- Wasting Time: Even though the young are spending more hours online, they are not using their time wisely. The target group needs to spend more time checking their financial stats online to help in their own identity theft protection. If they do not want to make the effort themselves, then parents should consider enrolling the entire family in a credit-monitoring program.
- Rip It Up: Although the credit card reform laws are making it more difficult for credit card companies to target younger Americans, they are still a desirable group. Credit card solicitations received in the mail should immediately be destroyed by a paper shredder since thieves are not above dumpster diving for information.
- Be Careful In Public Places: Unfortunately, around 55 percent of identity theft victims cannot determine how their information was stolen. Using public computers for online shopping sprees and making credit card purchases over the phone in public are ill advised as evil-doers may be hanging on every word you type or speak.
If you are a parent, friend or sibling of a potential fraud victim, you need to share some words of wisdom regarding identity theft security. If you don’t know where to start, sending a link to this article is an excellent first step.
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