the Fraudian Slip Podcast: ITRC Identity in Practice Report Takeaways and Key Findings (Part 1) – Identity Crimes in Black Communities

Hear from Jill Roberts, Director of Advocacy at Clarifi, and Jordan Brensinger, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, as they discuss the findings in the ITRC’s Identity in Practice Report, particularly identity crimes in Black communities

• The Identity Theft Resource Center recently released its Identity in Practice Report, which examines identity crimes in Black communities.
• According to the findings, most participants were victimized by strangers (56 percent). However, a large minority (40 percent) said they were victimized by someone they knew, with at least 13 percent being family members.   
• Fifty-three (53) percent of participants across the focus groups expressed emotional and psychological impacts after becoming a victim, as well as challenges accessing financial accounts, securing tax returns, obtaining identity PINs and dealing with the effects of reporting identity fraud.  
• The findings point to the need for more culturally aware victim assistance. In Part 1 of our Fraudian Slip podcast series on the report, we discuss the findings and the issue of identity crimes in Black communities with researcher Jordan Brensinger and Director of Advocacy at Clarifi Jill Roberts.
• You can learn more about the findings in our Identity in Practice Report and other topics discussed in the podcast by visiting our company website, idtheftcenter.org. You can download the report by going to www.idtheftcenter.org/publications.

Below is a transcript of our podcast featuring Jill Roberts, Director of Advocacy at Clarifi, and Jordan Brensinger, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University

Welcome to The Fraudian Slip, the Identity Theft Resource Center’s (ITRC) podcast, where we talk about all things identity compromise, crime, and fraud that impact people and businesses. Listen on Apple, Google, Spotify, SoundCloud, Audible and Amazon now. In this month’s episode (part 1 of a two-part series), we examine identity crimes in Black communities in the ITRC’s Identity in Practice Report.

In 2018, the data captured from identity crime victims contacting the ITRC began to show a statistical anomaly. It was just a blip at first. However, by the next year, it was clear what we were seeing was not a glitch but a trend. There were an increasing number of victims who identified as Black, well beyond what you would expect to see based on the percentage of the population who are African American or Black.

Being the curious people we are, we started to look for research that might explain why. Was there just greater awareness of identity crimes and where to get help that was leading people to the ITRC? Or were there more identity crime victims in communities of color? As it turns out, there was no research on this topic at the time.

From that seemingly simple question – why? – was born a multi-year, multi-phase program we call Identity in Practice. Supported by LifeLock (a part of Gen™), Synchrony and the Wells Fargo Foundation, the first two years and two phases have tackled the research component, resulting in a report issued this week and the topic for today’s discussion. You can download the report at www.idtheftcenter.org/publications to read the specific findings.

There’s too much good information to cover in a single podcast – so we are breaking this episode into two parts, posted one day apart. In Part 1, we focus broadly on the issue of identity crimes in Black communities with our panel of experts.

Our quantitative and qualitative research was conducted by the Black Researchers Collective in Chicago with the assistance of Tiye McKethen of the ITRC staff—a big shout-out to our stellar research team.

Also, here’s the answer to the question: are Black communities victimized at a higher rate than the general U.S. population? Yes.

Here to talk about the dynamics of that key finding is Jill Roberts from Clarifi, a community support organization in Philadelphia that helped organize the focus group in that city, and Jordan Brensinger, a researcher at Princeton University and a one-time intern at the ITRC. As always, we are joined by the ITRC’s President and CEO, Eva Velasquez.

We talked with Jill Roberts about the following:

• Clarifi and how identity crimes factor into their work
• Whether or not anything surprised her in the findings, specifically from the focus groups in her city, Philadelphia
• Some of the barriers to getting assistance to Black communities when it comes to identity crimes

We talked with Jordan Brensinger about the following:

• His area of research
• Whether or not he was surprised by any of the findings in his research
• How the ITRC research findings compare to his own

We talked with Eva Velasquez about the following:

• How the ITRC came to conduct research into identity crimes in Black communities
• What surprised her in the research findings

To learn more about Clarifi, visit www.clarifi.org.

To learn more about Jordan Brensinger’s research, visit www.jordanbrensinger.com

Contact the ITRC

If you think you have been the victim of an identity crime or want to avoid becoming a victim, you can speak with an expert advisor on the phone (888.400.5530), chat live on the web or send us an email during our normal business hours (6 a.m.-5 p.m. PST Monday-Friday). Just visit www.idtheftcenter.org to get started.

We will be back tomorrow with Part 2 of our discussion on the findings in the ITRC’s Identity in Practice Report.