Identify theft: America's fastest-growing crime: Alaska has 63.3 complaints of identify theft filed per 100,000 individuals.

• Author: Barbour, Tracy

Identity theft is one of the hottest-and scariest-topics today. It should be because it's one of the fastest-growing types of crimes in the country.

For the sixth year in a row, identity theft heads the annual list of consumer complaints collected by the Federal Trade Commission. Last year, the agency received 685,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints, with victims reporting total losses of $680 million. Thirty-seven percent of those complaints related strictly to identity theft.

Slightly more than half of the complaints involved victims age 18 to 39. And, surprisingly, child identity theft complaints are also escalating. Last year, 11,601 such reports were filed on behalf of victims under 18 years old. In 2004, the number was 9,595.

IDENTITY THEFT NOT AS BAD IN ALASKA

The state of Alaska isn't immune to identity theft problems, but identity theft is less rampant here. Alaska ranked 26th for FTC identity theft complaints last year, with 63.4 complaints filed per 100,000 people for a total of 421. However, Alaska did rank first in the nation for FTC fraud complaints in 2005.

In comparison, top-ranking Arizona, Nevada, California and Texas, respectively, had 156.9, 130.2, 125 and 116.5 identity theft complaints per 100,000 people last year. Their total number of complaints was 9,320 for Arizona, 3,144 for Nevada and 45,175 for California and 26,624 for Texas. Incidentally, the state with the fewest number of complaints was North Dakota, which had 24.8 complaints per 100,000 people or 158.

Of Alaska's 421 complaints, 153 were filed in Anchorage, 29 in Fairbanks, 21 in Wasilla and 13 in both Eagle River and Juneau. And by type, the state had 114 complaints for credit card fraud (27 percent), 82 for bank fraud (19 percent) and 57 for phone/ utilities fraud (14 percent).

Paul Honeman, public affairs director for the Anchorage Police Department, is "pleased" that Alaska had significantly fewer identity theft complaints than other states. But he quickly adds: "Even one (complaint) is too many ... I'm not naive; we're pretty prone and vulnerable."

That's why the Anchorage's Police Department has a special team devoted to combating identity theft and other types of fraud. The department's Crime Prevention unit conducts about 100 presentations annually at businesses and other locations. Some of the training segments covered are specifically designed to educate consumers about identity theft.

"We tell people don't let your credit and...