Washington, D.C. — Last year, identity theft once again topped the Federal Trade Commission’s list of top consumer complaints, which the agency issued this week. The FTC also reported that 2012 marked the first year it received more than two million complaints overall, with 18 percent of them related to identify theft.
Of the 369,132 identity theft-related complaints received last year, more than 43 percent were related to tax- or wage-related fraud, according to the FTC’s report, which provides national and state-by-state data. The report also lists the metropolitan areas that generated the most complaints, including the Top 50 metropolitan areas for both fraud and identity theft complaints.
The following are the nine other complaint categories making up the Top 10 complaints of 2012:
Number
Percent
Debt collection
199,721
10 percent
Banks and Lenders
132,340
6 percent
Shop-at-Home and Catalog Sales
115,184
6 percent
Prizes, Sweepstakes and Lotteries
98,479
5 percent
Impostor Scams
82,896
4 percent
Internet Services
81,438
4 percent
Auto-Related Complaints
78,062
4 percent
Telephone and Mobile Services
76,783
4 percent
Credit Cards
51,550
3 percent
A complete list of all complaint categories is available on page six of the report.
The FTC enters complaints into the Consumer Sentinel Network, a secure online database that is available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies across the country. Agencies use the data to research cases, identify victims and track possible targets.
Other federal and state law enforcement agencies contribute to Consumer Sentinel, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center and the offices of 14 state attorneys general. Private-sector organizations contributing data include all Better Business Bureaus in the U.S. and Canada, PrivacyStar, Publishers Clearing House and others.
