US Govt: Number Of Identity Theft Reports Doubled Last Year
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said today that the number of identity theft reports has doubled during 2020 when compared to 2019, reaching a record 1.4 million reports within a single year.
Throughout last year, fraudsters have continuously targeted government funds reserved for people finding themselves in financial trouble due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“2020’s biggest surge in identity theft reports to the FTC related to the nationwide dip in employment,” the FTC said.
“After the government expanded unemployment benefits to people left jobless by the pandemic, cybercriminals filed unemployment claims using other people’s personal information.”
For instance, the FTC received 394,280 reports regarding government benefits fraud attempts, the vast majority of them describing unemployment benefit identity theft fraud — compared with 12,900 reports filed in 2019.
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The FTC also saw reports regarding cybercriminals using stolen business or personal information to illegally apply for government-sponsored small business loan programs.
“Last year, we had 99,650 reports of fraud involving business or personal loans, compared with 43,920 reports in 2019,” the FTC added. “Not all of the new reports related to the government relief effort, but they were a big share of the increase.”
IRS federal stimulus payments were also targeted by scammers and reported to the FTC as tax identity theft attempts, with 89,390 reports being filed last year compared to the 27,450 reports sent in 2019.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has recently published taxpayer guidance on how to identify theft attempts involving unemployment benefits.
“The Internal Revenue Service today urged taxpayers who receive Forms 1099-G for unemployment benefits they did not actually get because of identity theft to contact their appropriate state agency for a corrected form,” the US federal revenue service said.
“Additionally, if taxpayers are concerned that their personal information has been stolen and they want to protect their identity when filing their federal tax return, they can request an Identity Protection Pin (IP PIN) from the IRS.”
The IRS announced in November 2020 that sensitive information will be masked on all business tax transcripts starting December to protect companies from identity theft.
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The US Treasury Department bureau also warned of a surge in pandemic-related scams trying to harvest personal information using economic impact payments as a lure, with the stolen info to be later used for identity theft and tax-related fraud.
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