The number of identity fraud victims increased by 16 per cent in the US last year, affecting 15.4 million people, according to the 2017 Identity Fraud Study by Javelin Strategy & Research. The amount stolen increased by nearly one billion dollars to $16 billion.

The graph below shows how the number of victims of identify fraud in the US has increased by one-third since 2011, while the amount criminals stole through ID fraud in 2016 has decreased since 2011, it is still $1 billion more than in 2015.

The report picked out four significant trends:

1. There were a record number of US citizens affected by ID fraud in 2016. Last year, 6.15 per cent of consumers became victims of identity fraud. This is the highest incidence since Javelin began tracking identity fraud.
2. Card-not-present (CNP) fraud increased by 40 per cent, driven by the growth of e- and m-commerce.
3. Account takeover losses reached $2.3 billion, a 61 per cent increase on 2015, while incidence rose 31 per cent.
4. New-account fraud continues unabated. Fraudsters have become better at evading detection and victims are likely to discover fraud through review of their credit report (15 per cent) or when they were contacted by a debt collector (13 per cent).

Javelin's report was based on a survey of more than 5,000 US consumers.