ID theft costs £2.7 billion a year

In a startling revelation it has been revealed that the cost of cleaning up ID theft in UK has soured to around £2.7 billion a year with some issues taking up to 200 hours to unwind. It has also been revealed that the average ID theft now nets criminals in excess of £1000 and there are real concerns this figure is set to spiral higher in the short to medium term. It seems that criminals are now using the Internet more and more to load Trojan horse coded programs onto individual computers, allowing them to record key presses, note passwords and log usernames.

Despite the fact that we all assume that ID theft will never happen to us there is no doubt that the threat from criminal activity, both online and off-line, has increased dramatically over the last couple of years. It is also evident that banks and insurance companies are now seeing an increase in the cost of covering ID theft which is filtering through to consumers in the shape of higher fees. The simple truth is that UK taxpayers will always foot the bill for ID theft because ultimately there is no way that the banks, as they have done in the past, can offer comprehensive cover and take on these potentially enormous liabilities themselves.