30 Eye-Watering Identity Management Statistics — SelfKey

You’d be forgiven for thinking of identity management as quite a dry subject. “Passwords”, “2FA”, “local storage”, and “privacy settings” are not exactly popular topics of conversation.

Despite the subject matter however, identity management is an increasingly important subject. 2017 saw a record number of data breaches and cases of identity theft, meaning most of us have experienced some failure in our identity management.

To illustrate how big the problem has become, let’s looks at some of the eye-watering statistics around identity management.

Statistics about account security

1. An 8-character password with upper and lower case letters, as well as numbers and symbols has 6,095,689,385,410,816 possible combinations — DigiCert
2. 35% of users still use weak passwords (meaning they contain less than 10 digits and a word) — Preempt
3. Only 10% of Google accounts use 2-Factor Authentication — Usenix Enigma
4. Only 12% of Americans use password managers — Pew Research Center
5. The most commonly used password is: 123456 — DigiCert
6. 73% of users have the same password for multiple sites — DigiCert
7. 33% of people use the same password every time — DigiCert

Statistics about data breaches

1. There were 1,579 data breaches in 2017 — The Identity Theft Resource Center
2. Last year 179 million records were exposed due to data breaches. In 2018, it’s well above 1 billion — Information is Beautiful
3. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have all experienced data breaches — Sources linked
4. 31% of data breach victims later experience identity theft — Experian
5. 1.6 billion records have been exposed since 2005 — The Identity Theft Resource Center
6. The number of data breaches increased from 1,091 in 2016 to 1,579 in 2017 — The Identity Theft Resource Center

Statistics about identity theft

1. There is a new victim of identity theft every 2 seconds in the United States — Clark
2. 14.2 million credit card numbers and 158 million social security numbers were exposed in 2017 — Experian
3. 13.8% of all consumer complaints came as the result of identity theft — Consumer Sentinel Network Report
4. Credit card fraud was the most common form of identity theft in 2017 — Experian
5. In 2017, consumers reported more than $900 million in total fraud losses — Experian

A failure in identity management often results in identity theft, the impact of which goes far beyond economics.

The emotional impact of identity theft

1. 85% of victims felt worried, angry and frustrated
2. 83% of victims felt violated
3. 69% of victims felt they could no longer trust others and felt unsafe
4. 67% of victims felt a sense of powerlessness or helplessness
5. 59% of victims felt sad or depressed
6. 55% of victims felt betrayed

Source: The Identity Theft Resource Center — The Aftermath: The Non-Economic Impacts of Identity Theft

The physical impact of identity theft

1. 84% of victims reported issues with their sleep habits
2. 77% of victims reported increased stress levels
3. 63% of victims reported problems with their concentration
4. 56% of victims reported persistent aches, pains, headaches and or cramps
5. 54% of victims reported increased fatigue
6. 50% of victims reported that they had lost interest in activities they once enjoyed

Source: The Identity Theft Resource Center — The Aftermath: The Non-Economic Impacts of Identity Theft

With these shocking statistics in mind, it’s easy to see why we need to start taking identity management much more seriously. Data breaches, identity theft and many other failures in identity management are on the rise, and we need to start protecting ourselves. Check out the SelfKey Identity Wallet to learn more.

Originally published at https://selfkey.org on January 8, 2019.