12 States Where Clients Are Most at Risk of Identity Theft

  As it does every tax season, the Internal Revenue Service has cautioned Americans to protect their financial information in order to avoid identity theft, fraud and scams. With good reason. Compared with pre-pandemic years, tax-related identity theft reports have increased by 45%, according to IPX1031, a provider of qualified intermediary services, citing Federal Trade Commission data. On Friday, IPX1031 published a report that breaks down identity theft by state and metro area. Its researchers used data from the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network to analyze ID theft reports in the 50 states and visualized the data per 100,000 residents. They based state population estimates on 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Categories of identity theft reports in the analysis included government documents or benefits fraud, credit card fraud, loan or lease fraud, bank fraud, employment or tax-related fraud, and phone or utilities fraud. The data analyzed covered the years 2017 through 2021. See the gallery for the 12 states with the biggest increases in identity theft reports since the onset of the pandemic.