With businesses such as Adidas, Best Buy, Delta, Kmart, Macy’s and Sears experiencing data breaches this year, the free credit-monitoring website WalletHub today released its report on 2018’s States Most Vulnerable to Identity Theft and Fraud. According to this new study, Michigan is the ninth most vulnerable.
“These are all existing data points from the federal trade commission, the internet crime and complaint center, the FBI and the Experian information solution center.”
That’s WalletHub Analyst, Jill Gonzalez. She says those existing data points were used to help determine where Americans are most susceptible to crimes like ID theft and Fraud. WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across ten key metrics with the data set ranging from identity-theft complaints per capita to average loss amounts due to fraud. Michigan landed at number 9 for being vulnerable to Identity theft and fraud.
“When it comes to both of those metrics, that’s where Michigan overall can do a lot better. It has some of the highest identity complaints per capita, the same with fraud and other complaints. And when it comes to losses, we’re seeing a pretty large amount for the average loss due to online identity theft specifically.”
Gonzalez says they also looked at things like policy. Things like Identity Theft passport programs and compliance with the Real ID Act among others.
“And the interesting thing with Michigan is that when it comes to policy, it’s actually pretty tight, there’s not much more policy to be added to make Michigan tighter on these laws. However, they’re still seeing a huge amount of identity theft and fraud and losses due to them, so it’s kind of a catch 22 in Michigan’s case, which we often times don’t see.”
Gonzalez adds there are things you can do to help protect yourself and prevent the damaging effects of cybercrimes.
“You definitely want to emphasize email security. You also want to sign up for credit monitoring.”
Gonzalez says with the busy online holiday season approaching, you want to make sure you’re doing everything securely. To find the complete study and more tips, you can go to wallethub.com and search for identity theft and fraud.
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-where-identity-theft-and-fraud-are-worst/17549/.
