Press release: “An estimated 3.6 million households, or about 3 percent of all households in the nation, learned that they had been the victim of at least one type of identity theft during a six-month period in 2004, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. Forty-eight percent had experienced an unauthorized use of credit cards; 25 percent had other accounts, such as banking accounts, used without permission; 15 percent experienced the misuse of personal information and 12 percent experienced multiple types of theft at the same time. These findings represent six-month estimates based on interviews conducted from July through December 2004 for the BJS National Crime Victimization Survey.”