Some 47% of U.S. adults have reported identity theft over the past two years, while the fraud’s toll ballooned to $712.4 billion in 2020, up 42% from 2019, according to a report released Tuesday by Aite Group, a Boston-based research and consulting firm, and sponsored by Giact, an Allen, Texas-based financial-services security firm.
The startling rise in this fraud stems at least in part from the onrush of e-commerce transactions and other card-not-present activity following the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic in March last year, earlier reports have said. A study released in January by TransUnion LLC, for example, found 100 million suspected fraudulent transactions in the six weeks following March 11 last year, up 5% from the weeks ranging from Jan. 1 to March 11.
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