"One of the fastest growing crimes in the UK, identity fraud, costs the country an estimated £1.3 billion a year."
This is of course, utter rubbish.
When Charles Clarke took up the baton from David Blunkett, his first propaganda piece in The Times, of 20th December 2004, which he recited almost word for word as his Second Reading "justification" for the Identity Cards Bill contained a similar claim, also made by David Blunkett, Des Browne and Peter Hain.
"It will reduce identity fraud, which now costs the UK more than £1.3 billion every year.Here we go again. Identity Fraud - a study" (241Kb .pdf) was a Cabinet Office report published in July 2002. It did not reccomend that ID Cards were a solution to fraud. However, the Home Office keeps on trotting out the unscientific guesstimate published in Annex B of this report. These figures are literally finger in the air guesses, but they are being portrayed by the Home Office as hard facts.
Just to make this clear, here are the "estimates" from Annex B:
Total cost of identity fraud | |||
---|---|---|---|
TOTAL | £1364m | ||
Organisation | Costs (£m) | Notes | |
Customs | VAT | 215 | Total MTIC fraud £1.7 £2.6bn (midpoint £2.15bn). Assumes ID fraud is 10% of this |
Money laundering | 395 | Based on £490m over 18 months; consistent with £200m in c. London | |
DFES | No figures | ||
DH | Health Authorities | 0.75 | Study done in 2 HAs only no broader extrapolation permitted 2816 multiple registrations |
IR | WFTC/DPTC | No figures | |
Tax repayment | No figures | ||
DSA | Driving tests | 1200 not allowed to take theory test; 3231 not allowed to take practical. Costs are non-financial (unqualified drivers). | |
DWP | Instrument of Payment | No figures | |
CSA |
No figures | ||
Child Benefit |
No figures | ||
Pensions & overseas |
No figures | ||
Welfare fraud | 35 | C 1% of all welfare fraud (£25bn) | |
LCD | Legal aid |
No figures | |
UKPS |
Passports | 1484 Fraudulent applications | |
DVLA |
Driving licences | No figures | |
GRO |
247 suspicious applications for, theft of and fraudulent uses of birth and death certificates | ||
GRO(S) |
About 25 suspicious applications for, theft of and fraudulent uses of birth and death certificates. | ||
Police forces |
Unpaid speeding/ parking tickets |
No figures | |
APACS |
Credit cards | 370 | Includes use of counterfeit, lost/stolen cards and card not present fraud 2001 estimate |
Insurance companies |
250 | Based on £1 bn total; 50% premeditated; 50% of this being direct ID fraud | |
CIFAS | 62.5 | Value of false ID/victim of impersonation fraud (by number of frauds reported) |
Neither the Home Office nor the Cabinet Office has bothered to repeat even this inadequate research in 2003 or 2004, so there is not even a guess available to see if the changes in various security measures such as passport delivery via allegedly secure courier rather than by postal mail, or credit card "Chip and PIN" has made any difference to this figure or not.
There is no such single crime or offence as "Identity Fraud". It is not the same as an occasional fraudulent credit card transaction, for instance, most of which happen online via the Internet, which is an area, where the choice of a Biometric ID card, is a bad one, as biometrics are useless over the Internet - nobody can trust them !
The Home Office does not even bother to collate "Identity Fraud" or "Identity Theft" crime statistics, either from the Police, or from the British Crime Survey.
How can they even tell if the situation gets better or worse with the introduction of ID Cards ?
How can they honestly base a multi-billion pound project on such a wobbly foundation ?
The Which? survey is also a one off event, and can provide no evidence of an increase in "Identity Fraud". The £1.3 billion a year figure might as well refer to the weight in tonnes of the criminals involved, the figure on its own is just as meaningless. N.B. this is not the only scandalously innaccurate figure being hyped to the media, upin which a major Government policy is founded on c.f. SOCA spin - How much does Serious and Organised Crime cost the UK ? £40 billion or £20 billion ? Where are the figures for the actual number of frauds and the number of criminals involved ? What is the average size of the financial loss involved in ID Fraud ? How much effort does it take to correct all the records involved with a "stolen identity" ? How can people seriously claim that "One of the fastest growing crimes in the UK, identity fraud, costs the country an estimated £1.3 billion a year." ? Given the extraordinary parroting of this false claim by the media, one has to ask if the "number of column inches", devoted to this will be fed back into the "climate of fear" media feedback loop, which apparently influences Home Office crime prevention strategy.
Good info... keep it up
Good article, as the saying goes "crap in crap out" seems like the case with ID Theft. The question nobody asks is why governments want to do all this controlling - they cannot seriosuly believe that they will catch more criminals - or perhaps they are even more stupid than we think?
I work with people who have had their identities stolen.
I can tell you that of the people I have dealt with the average cost of the accounts opened and used is £597 per individual.
It generally takes them about 2 years to find out about it, although this time span is reducing now due to the media that the subject is now receiving.
there are no hard and fast figures that the Home Office can use for id theft as it is NOT a crime in the UK. The "victims" in this under UK law are the companies who have been defrauded.
I deal with this day in and day out and I still think that stating "ID cards will lead to a reduction in ID theft" is a load of rubbish. It just means that fraudsters will try and forge ID cards. Biometric data was shown not to read correctly at least 1 time out of ten in test recently conducted.
There is a view that financial "ID fraud or theft" is more of a crime akin to libel, where your "good name" is besmirched by Credit Reference Bureaux etc. propagating "false data" about you to third parties. If they were made to be at least partially financially responsible for errors and fraud, then they would find it worthwhile to invest in better checking of applications for credit.
At the moment they just wash their hands of the process and lobby for more intrusive data on the whole population - they already have an exemption to getting otherwise illegal access to the Electoral Roll, and they are lobbying for access to the proposed National Identity Register.
It is amazing that the Nome Office does not even bother to collate crime statistics about the myriad of offences which might come under the heading "identity theft or identity fraud", either from the Police or the Courts or from the National Crime Survey.
How they can claim that ID cards or even "money laundering regulations" make any difference to "identity fraud" is a mystery - they have no way of measuring the success or failure of their policies.
Identity theft is a myth. The vast majority of cases where someone is defrauded happen because of features of the credit system. Such as handing over your card in a restaurant, or giving your card details to someone on the phone, or internet. Once they have copied your details, including your three digit security code, there is nothing to stop them using your details for themselves.
This is not identity theft.
Apparently, seven out of ten people have been touched by id theft. I dont know anyone who has experienced it. And I dont know anyone that knows anyone that has. Twenty years ago, it would have been easy to do, and yet was unheard of. So how come it seems to be common place now, when there are so many more security measures?
I think that it is mentioned so often in the media in order to 'soften us up' to accept the National Identity Card.
Dear Sirs,
I took part in three videos and have someone harassing me on the internet, I have a clear idea of who it is, not only this the person in question is setting up companies and cashing in on MY NAME.
Please can you advise me on what I should do and who do I report this to?
Yours truly
Miss Daniela Pani (The original one)