Identity Theft Study

Identity theft receives a fair amount of media coverage, and organizations (especially at the headquarters level) will often turn to their security officers for guidance. A new study on identity theft in the U.S. has just been released that dispels a number of popular beliefs. For example, less than 1/5 of the cases involved information obtained from the Internet while low-tech methods such as dumpster diving and stealing mail accounted for the majority of stolen personal information. There's an AP news story with a good summary here and the complete report in PDF format here.