Identity theft is not going to go away.  The thieves know how profitable it is and how easy it is to avoid being caught. The Federal Trade Commission recently released its annual report on the complaints of 2011.  No one should be surprised to see Identity Theft in the top spot once again.  This is the crime that not restricted by borders or governments.  Your information can be stolen from any place where it has been stored as well as sold to anyone anywhere who might wish to abuse it.

There has been a fluctuation in the numbers for the past three years 2009 numbers were higher than 2010.  Many people speculated that the crime was receding while I believe that the financial environment and tighter credit granting practices had more of an impact.  Now with the report from Javelin placing the number closer to 12 million and the number increases from the FTC for 2011 it is clearer that the problem appears to be back on the rise.

When you read in the paper or see on television that a group has been arrested, remember that there are a lot more of them out there continuing to commit the crime.  There have been a lot of ideas put forward to help protect you from identity theft.  The problem with the claim is that there are so many different ways your identity can be used and abused that no one idea can cover all of the different elements.

There are some of the companies offering services are expanding into the uncovered areas.  Each step is a move in the right direction.  We need to remember that complete protection is a number of steps away from being total coverage.

One of the topics I will cover has to do with data breaches.  There are all sorts of opinions about the need to protect a company’s data.  The rules about protecting the data vary from State to State but the base principals  are the same.  You collect it you need to make sure that it is secure