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Quote:Identity fraud rates are highest in major metropolitan areas. What's surprising, however, is that identity fraud is also high in some less populated cities like Little Rock, Ark. and Springfield, Ill. It might seem harder to explain high rates of identity fraud in less populated areas, but this is where our previous research on synthetic identity fraud becomes especially relevant...

While "true name identity theft" is a very real problem, the reality is that the majority of identity fraud is never reported by consumers because consumers are never directly victimized.

This classification is what we call "synthetic identity fraud," and it accounts for 80 to 85 percent of all identity fraud. Synthetic identity fraud is when a fraudster creates, or synthesizes an identity using a combination of real and false identity elements -- say, a false name, my Social Security number, and the address and mobile phone number of the fraudster himself.

With synthetic identity fraud, there's no consumer victim to say "that's not me." Meanwhile, the fraudster continues to open new accounts and have credit cards, mobile phones and other goods sent to his address. As you can imagine, this type of identity fraud is much harder to detect...