Survey: 41 Million Americans Have Been Victims of Identity Theft

We talk about identity theft quite a lot here, and this latest bit of news on the subject clearly suggests that these discussions will not go away anytime soon.

An article over at CNBC.com is reporting on the results of a Bankrate.com survey that reveals up to 41 million Americans have had their identities stolen. That figure will surely come as a shock to many, and, as a matter of fact, it came as a surprise to me. While I have long been aware of the growing problem of identity theft in this country, I was taken aback to learn that roughly 13 percent of everyone living in the U.S. had been hit this way.

According to Bankrate.com analyst Mike Cetera, ���About 2 in 5 Americans have either been an identity theft victim or know someone who has. This is a widespread problem and many people aren't doing enough to protect themselves.���

Revealingly, the folks over at Bankrate inform us that as the efforts at nefariously capturing identities are as relentless as ever, prospective victims remain less than vigilant, overall, in engaging in the relatively simple steps that can go a long way to stopping a good deal of the trouble: 42 percent of Americans do not check their credit reports regularly, and nearly 40 percent of people are happy to do their banking and engage in other sensitive transactions on unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Additionally, roughly a quarter of the folks polled by Bankrate say that they basically use the same password for all of their different online accounts.

In other words, while the digital neighborhood continues to go down the tubes, it is clear that large numbers of people continue to make life especially easy for the criminals by keeping their windows open and their doors unlocked.

So shut ���em���and lock ���em���because the threat is real, it is growing, and the damage can be positively catastrophic.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large