A government study recently discovered that consumer fraud takes a $40 billion toll each year on its victims. According to a Harris poll, more than 92% of all Americans are affected. As the lead...

CONSUMER FRAUD
    Serial Number
    Contents
    Page Number
    1.
    Introduction
    1
    2.
    Consumer Frauds and its reduction or elimination
    2-5
    3.
    Impact of Consumer fraud
    6-8
    4.
    Protection of Consumers
    9
    5.
    Conclusion
    10
    6.
    Referencing
    11
INTRODUCTION
In this era to global digitalization and liberalization, the world is becoming a smaller place to live in by the day. As technology advances and more and more people getting connected, every day more new ways are discovered to defraud other people. The consumers are getting fooled by new methods now and then. From stealing the identity of a person to using the credit cards and debit cards of a person, the scammers find out new ways of scamming the people.
This assignment deals with the identification of consumer frauds and their recent statistics. It also analyses various methods that the consumers can employ to avoid the fraud from happening.
CONSUMER FRAUDS AND ITS REDUCTION OR ELIMINATION
Consumer fraud means stealing the money of any person by another person by using any of the various methods of malpractice, cheating or unfair means. Consumer fraud can happen to anyone at any given point of time. In the case of consumer fraud, the victim may be offered fraudulent offers and incurring a financial loss or any other loss to the victim. The victims are made to believe that they are participating in something legal but in truth a fraud is being committed on them.
TYPES OF CONSUMER FRAUDS:
1. IDENTITY THEFT: This is the most common consumer fraud committed in the year 2019. In identity theft a person, through data mining steals the identity or personal data of another person so that the thief can assume the identity of the victim. Stealing of personal meaning stealing of name of the victim, the social security number of the victim, details of bank account etc. The thieves use the stolen data of the individual to open bank accounts, get issue credit cards (Li, Y., Yazdanmehr, A., Wang, J., & Rao, H. R. (2019)). They may also open the utility accounts to get a residential address proof for loans or other various financial services. They can also access the bank accounts and withdraw the money and also enjoy the benefits of health insurance.
2. IMPOSTER SCAMS: As the name suggests, in imposter scams the imposter pretends to be someone who is known and trusted by the victim and then the imposter tries to asks for financial favor impersonating the trusted person. The victim ends up paying the imposter without the knowledge that he is being scammed. This can be done over phone calls or e-mails or text messages (van de Weijer, S. G., Leukfeldt, R., & Bernasco, W. (2019)). The imposter can be acting out as an officer form the social security cell or IRS officer or tech support person or even pretend to be grandchildren ask money from the grandparents. They also can pretend to be caregivers who would pretend to the victim to find him a job and end up scamming him.
Average monthly number of Imposters in recent times:
3. DEBT COLLECTION FRAUD: In this the victim receives a call or letters in which the scammer pretends to be an agent of the debt holders and will ask you to repay the debts. In general trade parlance, the business houses such as credit card issuers, financial institutions appoint a collection agent who collects the debts on their behalf (Foohey, P., Jiménez, D., & Odinet, C. K. (2020)). They may contact the victim on an actual debt but are scammers and fly off with the money paid by the victim.
4. TELEPHONE AND...