Wisconsin Consumer Protection News

FTC Issues Annual List Of  Top Consumer Complaints

The Federal Trade Commission today issued its annual report, “Consumer Fraud and Identity Theft Complaint Data” on fraud complaints consumers have filed with the agency. For the seventh year in a row, identity theft tops the list, accounting for 36 percent of the 674,354 complaints received between January 1 and December 31, 2006. Other categories near the top of the fraud complaint list include shop-at-home/catalog sales; prizes, sweepstakes and lotteries; Internet services and computer complaints; and Internet auction fraud.

“Consumers’ help in stopping unlawful operations is critical,” said Deborah Platt Majoras, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. “By filing a complaint with the FTC, consumers are making information available to more than 1,600 law enforcement agencies that have access to our secure database.”

“It’s as easy as a click or a call,” she said. “The FTC has an online complaint form at FTC.gov, or consumers can reach us at 1-877-FTC-HELP.”

This year brought some firsts. For the first time, complaint data has been broken out by metropolitan statistical areas with populations greater than 100,000. Breakout data for more than 350 metropolitan areas can be found at http://www.consumer.gov/sentinel. And this year, complaint data has been sorted into 16 categories. They are: Read more at ftc.gov.

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