POLL: Identity Under Attack; Have You Been a Victim of Fraud?

Needham, too, is not exempt from fraud.

Over the past year, local police logs, including Natick’s, show an uptick in residents reporting that they have been victims.

In the last week alone in town, a person reported that their bank account had been compromised, another said that her Verizon wireless account had been tapped, and a resident on Emerson Place reported to police that a person had tried to get unemployment insurance using her name and social security number.

The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 11,571,900 incidents of identity fraud are reported annually, and 7 percent of all households have been affected by some type of fraud. More than 60 percent of that involves misuse of a credit card. Read the latest statistics on fraud here.