Measuring Identity Theft in Canada: 2006 Consumer Survey

Working Paper #21 by Susan Sproule and Norm Archer, January 2008.

Survey

• A late-2006 national survey by DeGroote's business school.
• An Internet panel returned 3550 responses from English speakers.
• Respondents were 18 or older with a credit card and bank account.
• Incident rates of 4.0% to 9.1% bracketed similar U.S. studies.
• Internet surveys reportedly gave rates about 50% higher than phone surveys.

Scale and cost

• Over one million Canadians were victims each year.
• Perpetrators gained over $3 billion from them.
• Victims spent $164 million of their own money.
• They spent over 18 million hours a year resolving problems.
• The median fraud amount was $595; victims spent 8 hours and $4.

Types, detection and perpetrators

• Existing credit card purchases made up 48.7% of cases.
• Money taken from existing bank accounts made up 24%.
• The access method was known in 42% of cases.
• Over half of cases were detected within a month.
• 12.7% of victims were unsure when the theft occurred.
• Victims knew something about the perpetrator in 35% of cases.
• Relatives accounted for 9% of all cases.
• Document breeding occurred in 3.5% of cases.

Attitudes

• 11.7% were extremely and 24.3% very concerned.
• 3.4% said they had answered emails requesting account information.
• Eight attitude segments of roughly equal size emerged.