By Selena Maranjian

Filed under: Identity Theft, Consumer Ally, Credit Cards, Consumer Issues, Ripoffs & Scams, Debt Collection

If you’re fed up with hearing people complain, imagine being the Consumer Sentinel Network. This online database for law enforcement compiled and categorized more than 2 million complaints in 2012 — instances of fraud, scams, schemes, and violations consumers reported to everyone from the FTC to the Better Business Bureau to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

So which industries or groups of people cause us the most grief? Here are the CSN‘s findings for the top 10 complaint categories and the percentage of the total complaints that each represents:

1. Identity theft (18 percent)
2. Debt collection (10 percent)
3. Banks and lenders (6 percent)
4. Shop-at-home and catalog sales (6 percent)
5. Prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries (5 percent)
6. Impostor scams (4 percent)
7. Internet services (4 percent)
8. Auto-related complaints (4 percent)
9. Telephone and mobile services (4 percent)
10. Credit cards (3 percent)

Stolen identities
It makes sense that identity theft tops the list. Detecting, uncovering and correcting the fallout from identity theft is a long, labyrinthine process. Sure, it’s terrible if you lose, say, $500 or $1,000. But with identity theft, some people have not only lost a lot of money but have spent years trying to undo the damage done, encountering many frustrations along the way.

Most of us know to shred documents containing personal information before discarding them, and to be careful to whom we divulge personal information. It can be easy to imagine that identity theft won’t happen to us. But according to the CSN, nearly one-fifth of all complaints — a whopping 369,132 — were about identity theft.

Military variations
The distribution of complaints was different among military personnel than other Americans. For example, while their top two complaints were the same as the overall results, their No. 6 complaint category was mortgage foreclosure relief and debt management, while it was just 15th for the overall nation.

Foreclosures and debt problems have been major issues for many service members. That’s because they often receive orders to pick up and move to a new location and assignment, but with our economy struggling and home prices depressed, they can end up owing more than their homes are worth. Worse still, hundreds have had their homes illegally foreclosed upon by big banks — JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Bank of America (BAC), and Citigroup (C) — as has been reported by The New York Times. Military members should know that settlements have been struck with big banks to address these and other wrongs, and that entities such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are looking out for their interests.

Fraud
This wonderful digital age has ushered in new ways for scammers to scam us. The most common method …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance