According to the Canwest News Service, identity theft victims in Canada spent more than $150 million of their own money and spent 20 million hours to resolve the fraud in the past year.

The survey of more than 3,000 consumers, carried out in February by researchers at the McMaster eBusiness Research Center, found that victims (57 percent) do not know how they were victimized. In addition, the study showed that in-store shopping is riskier than online commerce, as 25 percent of cases were associated with business transactions conducted in person compared to 15 percent linked to online transactions. Debit card skimming operations made up another 13 percent of the cases.

The study says historically, 25 per cent of cases of identity fraud were committed by someone known to the victim, but the survey found this represented only seven per cent of all cases.

A recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report indicates that identity theft among Americans decreased during 2005, is flawed, according to Avivah Litan, a Gartner analyst who reported different findings earlier this year. The FTC report, which revealed that 8.3 million adults, or 3.7 percent of Americans over the age of 18, were victimized by ID theft in 2005, drew immediate skepticism from Litan and other security experts.

According to SC Magazine, Litan’s February report stated that 15 million Americans were victimized by some sort of identity theft-related fraud in the 12-month period ending August 2006. Those figures represent a more than-50 percent increase since 2003. However, the FTC report, which surveyed 2,917 people between March 27 and June 11, 2006, showed a dramatic decrease from the 10 million the FTC reported in 2003.

“Consumer surveys have proven to be unreliable methods for gathering absolute numbers on identity theft, although they are useful in ascertaining fraud trends,” said Litan.”Further consumer surveys give an incomplete picture of identity theft losses, since they do not include fraud that occurs when thieves simply make up fictitious identities in order to steal money.”