Kicking off this Monday, the United Kingdom's National Identity Fraud Prevention Week marks the first time the government made a nationwide attempt to raise public awareness of the dangers of identity theft, which is believed to be the country's fastest growing financial and cyber crime. In the official site of this special program, the fact that the crime affects everyone from private individuals to entire businesses is directly addressed.

The site further emphasizes that even though a lot of people already know about identity theft, most businesses and consumers are ignorant about the steps they need to take in order to fully protect themselves against this ever-present online danger. It then describes the National Identity Fraud Prevention Week as a nationwide attempt to educate people on how to properly battle against the evils of stolen identity and impersonation fraud.

At present, one of ten people has already been victimized by scams of this nature. It involves crooks who use the stolen credentials of unsuspecting marks to impersonate them for the purpose of, say, establishing bogus lines of credit at the victim's expense. Even businesses are not exempt to this dire impersonation scheme. Aside from just leaving people bankrupt, identity theft can also substantially damage their credit ratings as well.

According to the statistics provided by the UK Identity Fraud Steering Committee, this cyber crime annually costs the UK economy about £1.2 billion; a hefty sum that shows just how "lucrative" this scam is and how widespread it remains even after a decade's worth of warnings and security measures. The fraud prevention service known as Cifas adds that there are about fifty-nine thousand victims of this impersonation racket in just the first nine months of the present year, which is a whopping 36% increase from the same length of time last year. More often than not, the typical targets of these online hooligans are credit card accounts.

The National Identity Fraud Prevention Week website also provides a multitude of relevant resources that should help any Briton or British corporation to prevent the expensive and incapacitating effects of this widespread online scam. All you need to do is sign up, and the site itself will guide you through the entire registration process so that you can easily get updates and tips on the most effective methods to defend yourself and your company against identity fraud.