FTC Releases List of Top Consumer Complaints in 2008

The Federal Trade Commission on Friday released the list of top consumer complaints received by the agency in 2008. The list, contained in the publication “Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for January-December 2008,” showed that...

• for the ninth year in a row, identity theft was the number one consumer complaint category.
• Of 1,223,370 complaints received in 2008, 313,982 – or 26 percent – were related to identity theft.

In December, the FTC called on the US Government to "extend two-factor authentication" (such as the application provided by HomeATM) standards deployed by banks to all private sector organizations that maintain consumer accounts, in a bid to combat rising levels of ID fraud.  (See: Dual Authentication for ALL Consumer Accounts - FTC) 

This report breaks out complaint data on a state-by-state basis and also contains data about the 50 metropolitan areas reporting the highest per capita incidence of fraud and other complaints. In addition, the report sets forth the 50 metropolitan areas reporting the highest incidence of identity theft.

The report states that credit card fraud was the most common form of reported identity theft at 20 percent, followed by government documents/benefits fraud at 15 percent, employment fraud at 15 percent, phone or utilities fraud at 13 percent, bank fraud at 11 percent and loan fraud at four percent.