Measuring Identity Theft in Canada: 2008 Consumer Survey

Working Paper #23 by Susan Sproule and Norm Archer, July 2008.

Survey

• MeRC ran the survey for the Ontario Research Network on Electronic Commerce.
• It measured the nature and extent of identity theft and fraud in Canada.
• It also covered consumer concerns, prevention and detection behaviour.
• An Internet panel produced 3017 valid responses.
• It was the second of two MeRC surveys for ORNEC.
• The first ran in late 2006.
• This one ran in early 2008 and covered the most recent year.

Victims and costs

• 6.5% of adults, almost 1.7 million people, suffered identity fraud in a year.
• Victims spent over 20 million hours and $150 million resolving it.
• More than half involved only unauthorized credit card purchases.
• Consumers rarely pay for credit card frauds.
• Excluding credit cards, victims numbered 700,000.
• They still spent 12 million hours and over $110 million of their own money.

How information was accessed

• 57% of victims did not know how their information was accessed.
• In-person transactions accounted for 25% of known cases.
• Online transactions accounted for 15%.
• Online fraud was up from 5% of cases historically.
• Debit card skimming accounted for 13% of known cases.
• The rise in telephone scams seen in US studies did not appear.
• Only 7% of cases involved a perpetrator the victim knew.

Reporting

• 13% of cases were reported to police; 6% to credit reporting agencies.
• 0.5% were reported to PhoneBusters.
• Another 2.7% of the sample had data accessed in a breach.
• That is about 700,000 more adults at risk.

Concern

• One third reported higher concern than a year before.
• Concern increased with age.
• Past credit card fraud victims were less concerned than other victims.
• The authors credited mature credit card fraud detection and resolution.

Protection habits

• 79% shredded important documents.
• 59% used a locked mailbox.
• 57% kept sensitive information in a secure location.
• 50% carried fewer identity documents.
• 30% stopped or reduced mailed statements.
• 92% refused to give information to phone surveys or promotions.
• 88% shielded ABM and debit card machine use.
• 35% stopped handing cards to waiters or gas station attendants.

Online practices

• 75% used hard-to-break passwords.
• 59% used different passwords for different applications.
• 30% never changed their important passwords.
• 20% cut online shopping because of identity theft concerns.
• 9% cut online banking.
• The threat was hurting e-commerce in general.

Detection

• Careful, frequent account monitoring is the best detection method.
• 85% had online access to at least one bank account.
• 96% of them checked balances online.
• Most checked every few days or better.
• 49% never requested a credit report.
• 77% never checked land registry records.

Phishing

• 41% received an email asking them to verify account information.
• 2.7% of those recipients responded.
• 1.0% did not know whether they had responded.
• The potential response rate was 3.7%, down from 4.9% earlier.