Believe it or not, once someone’s identity has been stolen, it often takes the victim quite some time to realize that the damage has already been done.  Because we are much lazier records keepers than generations before, largely due to the fact that we rely so heavily upon computerized record keeping, the time lapse between the theft and the discovery of that theft is often quite large.  In fact, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center Aftermath Study in 2004, it was determined that 39-48% of victims realized that their identity had been stolen within three months and an astonishingly few 9-18% of those poor souls don’t discover the wrong doing for four or more years.  That means that all that damage has been done and perhaps doing more and more damage over the long years that it takes the victims to realize what had happened. According to our friends at Javelin Strategy and Research in a report they put out in 2009, 50.2 million American consumers were members of credit monitoring services to try to combat identity theft with early warning systems that come with the services of their credit monitoring companies. The credit monitoring company known as AnnualCreditReport.com saw 44% of the subscribing consumers to be their very own customers and again that number is reported in the 2009 report put out by Javelin Strategy and Research.  The identity thieves are already crafty, knowing the ins and outs of the system and the ways to exploit its weaknesses.  They also count on human nature and ignorance to help grease the wheels of that theft.  Without access to the statistics that are becoming more and more prevalent if the consumer does the necessary research, the thieves have a much broader sense of access to the information they need to make the heist of private and sensitive information of the victims.

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