Identity theft again tops FTC’s top complaints list for 2011
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on February 27, 2012 released its list of top consumer complaints received by the agency in 2011. For the twelfth year in a row, identity theft topped the list at 279,156 complaints or 15%. The breakdown for the next nine complaint categories (from a list of 30) is as follows:
| Category | Number | Percentage |
| Debt collection | 180,928 | 10 |
| Prizes, sweepstakes, and lotteries | 100,208 | 6 |
| Shop-at-home and catalog sales | 98,306 | 5 |
| Banks and lenders | 89,341 | 5 |
| Internet services | 81,805 | 5 |
| Automobile-related | 77,435 | 4 |
| Imposter scams | 73,281 | 4 |
| Telephone and mobile services | 70,024 | 4 |
| Advance-fee loans and credit protection/repair | 47,414 | 3 |
The FTC records the complaints in its Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Other federal and state law enforcement including the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Department of Justice’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, and the attorneys general offices of Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington also contribute to the database content, along with private-sector organizations such as U.S. and Canadian members of the Better Business Bureau, Western Union and Moneygram, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.