‘In 1998 the US Congress created a new federal offense of identity theft. ‘
This was the single biggest con game perpetrated on the American People during the Clinton administration folks.
The reason the ‘statistics’ are ‘so high’ is artificial, created by changing credit card fraud, check fraud to ‘identity theft’.
Its now a faux industry. You are no more at risk of having your ‘identity stolen’ as we all define it - IE assuming your identity so as to live, work, vote and buy as ‘you’ then we were at any other point in the past fifty years.
btw, I say this ‘allowing’ for population growoth in the last five decades.
The government now pretends credit card fraud is ‘indentity theft’.
Sorry, that waitress that copied your credit card number and then ordered 379 knives for her husbands flee market stand this Saturday did NOT STEAL YOUR IDENTITY.
Stole your money? Yep.
Screwed up your credit report score? Probably for a short time.
But ‘steal your identity’?
Nope.