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Key takeaways
- Criminals steal personal data through mail theft, breaches, phishing and impostor scams.
- Losses and emotional harm are rising, with many victims losing tens of thousands of dollars.
- There are several key steps you can take to protect yourself, including using strong, unique passwords on all accounts.
A federal judge called the case “Kafkaesque.” In January 2025, Matthew David Keirans, 59, was sentenced to 12 years in prison on federal charges of aggravated identity theft and making false statements. But this was no ordinary identity theft case: Keirans had so thoroughly assumed the identity of his victim, William Woods, whom he’d met years earlier, that Woods was accused of and charged with taking his identity. Woods had told his bank that an impostor was racking up debt in his name (Keirans had obtained loans totaling about $250,000), so the police called Keirans, who sent fake ID documents that convinced them he was Woods, and the real Woods was arrested for fraud. Later, when Woods insisted that he was the real Woods, a disbelieving judge sent him to a psychiatric hospital
After years of deceit, Keirans finally pled guilty when DNA testing proved his story false.
That’s an extreme example of identity fraud, which can take many forms, including criminals appropriating taxpayers’ identities to steal their refunds. But it always involves the theft of your personal information, such as your Social Security number, home address, birth date, and account numbers (bank, medical insurance, and credit card numbers) to commit fraud.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received more than 1 million reports through its IdentityTheft.gov site last year. And the amount that victims lose is staggering — and growing. The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) notes in its 2025 Consumer Impact Report that “losses totaling between $10,000 and more than $1 million are now common, “helping to create high levels of emotional distress, including thoughts of self-harm."
The actual number of victims and losses is likely far higher because people are often reluctant to report these crimes.
How identities are stolen
Criminals use a variety of methods to obtain your information. Some are low-tech, such as mail theft. A scammer could also steal your information with such simple tactics as handing you a clipboard and asking you to sign a petition that requests your Social Security number. Some are large-scale: Hackers steal information from companies such as banks and retailers with large databases (data breaches are rampant). With impostor scams, you receive a request from what seems like a trusted source — a bank, a government agency, a hiring manager for a job, an IT specialist, a celebrity — to lure you into providing personal information.
Frequently, scammers obtain data when you click a link from an email or text, which takes you to a bogus website. Links in phishing messages can infect your computer with malware that harvests your data.
Artificial Intelligence is making it harder to detect these frauds. Common warning signs of a scam, for example, are texts or emails requesting personal information that include misspellings and grammatical errors, suspicious URLs, or missing or not-right logos. Scammers know this — and they’ve adapted.
“Criminals can use generative AI to create something that looks incredibly realistic and nearly impossible to distinguish from a legitimate bank communication,” says Suzanne Sando, Javelin’s senior analyst in fraud and security and author of the AARP-sponsored report. “We know that criminals are constantly switching their tactics. They’re doing whatever they can to circumvent whatever technology is out there to detect them or anything that consumers have been taught to look for.”
And AI is making scam attempts increasingly sophisticated. “Not only can someone create a fake ID, they can create a fake voice,” says Adam Singer, principal of Credit Report Law Group in New York.
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