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Vishing For Credit

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by Felix Salmon
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Feb 13 2008 12:00am EDT

Vishing for Credit

Is it possible that, by conducting a telephone survey, one can reliably conclude that identity fraud costs Americans $45 billion per year? I suspect it isn't. And I'm even more suspicious of enormous jumps like this:

Fraudsters are turning to lower-tech methods by utilizing telephone theft more than ever before. Access through mail and telephone transactions grew from 3 percent of ID theft in 2006 to 40 percent in 2007.

That said, I wasn't aware of vishing before reading this report, and now I understand what all those weird phone calls are that I have been receiving of late, talking automatedly and cryptically about "your credit card". I thought they were merely telemarketers ignoring the Do Not Call list; turns out they were vishers. In any case, even if the 3%-to-40% figure is overblown, it does seem that fraudsters have finally picked up on Americans' desperate desire for ever more credit.

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