Updated November 2026 · New Hampshire data report
New Hampshire identity theft statistics: what the FTC numbers show
New Hampshire identity theft statistics come from one main public source, the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book, and this page quotes the latest edition line by line. You get the state’s report counts, losses and theft types, how New Hampshire compares with the rest of New England, and what the numbers mean for your household paper.
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Quick answer
In 2024, New Hampshire consumers filed 2,079 identity theft reports with the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network, or 150 per 100,000 residents, which ranked the state 35th, and they reported $34.6 million in fraud losses with a median loss of $325, according to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024, the latest edition posted as of November 2026. Credit card misuse was the most reported type of identity theft in the state, named in 38 percent of reports. New Hampshire Document Shredding turns old statements and tax papers into unreadable shred at 99 cents per pound, part of our residential shredding service.
Where New Hampshire identity theft statistics come from
The Federal Trade Commission collects consumer reports about fraud, identity theft and other marketplace problems in a database called the Consumer Sentinel Network. Each spring it publishes a Data Book that totals the previous year’s reports, with a separate page for every state. Nearly every New Hampshire identity theft figure you will see quoted online traces back to that book.
As of November 2026, the most recent edition posted on the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel reports page is the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024, dated March 2025. It covers reports filed in calendar year 2024. In March 2026 the FTC released national totals for 2025, which we quote further down, but the state pages on this page all come from the 2024 book. When the FTC posts a 2025 edition with state pages, we will update these figures.
What the data is
Read the numbers with care. The Data Book “is based on unverified reports filed by consumers” and “is not based on a consumer survey.” Reports come from people who contact the FTC directly and from partner agencies and organizations such as the Better Business Bureau. Each one reflects what a consumer chose to tell the government.
What that means for the numbers
Report counts measure who reported, not everyone who was hit. Many victims never file anything. A rise or fall can reflect awareness and outreach as much as crime. Per-capita rankings use 2023 U.S. Census population estimates, and the FTC notes that its state rankings exclude state-specific data contributor reports.
Every number on this page is quoted from an FTC publication and labeled with its year. We have not adjusted, projected or estimated anything. Where the FTC has not published a figure, such as county-level identity theft counts for New Hampshire, we leave it out rather than guess.
New Hampshire identity theft statistics for 2024, line by line
The New Hampshire page in the 2024 Data Book is short. It gives totals, rankings, the top ten report categories and the top identity theft types. Here is all of it in one place.
| Measure (calendar year 2024) | New Hampshire | Where it appears in the Data Book |
|---|---|---|
| Identity theft reports | 2,079 | NH state page and identity theft rankings |
| Identity theft reports per 100,000 population | 150 | State Rankings: Identity Theft Reports |
| State rank for identity theft per capita | 35th | State Rankings: Identity Theft Reports |
| Total fraud and other reports | 14,342 | NH state page and fraud rankings |
| Fraud and other reports per 100,000 population | 1,033 | State Rankings: Fraud and Other Reports |
| State rank for fraud and other reports per capita | 30th | State Rankings: Fraud and Other Reports |
| Fraud reports | 8,838 | Appendix C |
| Share of fraud reports with a money loss | 39% | Appendix C |
| Total reported fraud losses | $34,625,261 | Appendix C (shown as $34.6M on the state page) |
| Median fraud loss | $325 | NH state page and Appendix C |
Two things stand out. First, New Hampshire sits in the lower half of states on both measures. Its identity theft rate of 150 reports per 100,000 people put it 35th in 2024, and its fraud and other report rate of 1,033 per 100,000 put it 30th. Second, a low rank does not mean a small problem. Over 2,000 households and individuals told the FTC that someone used their information, and New Hampshire consumers reported losing more than $34 million to fraud in a single year.
The median fraud loss of $325 also deserves a second look. Half of New Hampshire fraud reports with a loss were for $325 or less, which explains why so many people never report at all. A $300 charge on a card often gets disputed with the bank and forgotten. The FTC’s count only includes the people who took the extra step.
The five kinds of identity theft New Hampshire residents reported
For each state, the Data Book lists the top identity theft types as a share of that state’s identity theft reports. People can name more than one type in a single report, so the percentages add up to more than 100. Nationally, the FTC says 14 percent of 2024 identity theft reports included more than one type.
| Identity theft type (FTC category) | Share of NH identity theft reports, 2024 | What it usually looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Credit card | 38% | Charges on an existing card, or a new card opened in your name |
| Other identity theft | 25% | FTC catch-all, including email or social media accounts, online shopping or payment accounts, insurance and medical services |
| Bank account | 18% | Debit card or electronic transfers, existing accounts or new accounts |
| Loan or lease | 13% | Auto loans, personal or business loans, student loans, rentals or real estate loans |
| Phone or utilities | 10% | New mobile, landline or utility accounts, or changes to existing ones |
The pattern matches the country as a whole. The FTC’s 2024 executive summary says “Credit Card tops the list of identity theft types reported in 2024,” with 449,032 reports nationwide from people whose information was misused on an existing card or a new card application. In New Hampshire, credit card misuse appeared in more than a third of identity theft reports.
Cards and bank accounts
Together these two types appeared in well over half of New Hampshire’s 2024 identity theft reports. The numbers that open the door, card and account numbers, sit on every monthly statement, receipt and pre-approved offer that comes through the mail.
Loans and leases
New loans in someone else’s name need more than a card number. They usually need a Social Security number, a date of birth and an address history. Tax returns, W-2s, old loan files and benefit letters carry all three.
Phone and utilities
A new phone line or utility account can be opened with a name, an address and a few identifying details. Old utility bills and phone contracts give a thief those details along with an account number to call in about.
None of this tells you how the thief got the information. The Data Book records what was misused, not where the data came from. A breach, a phishing email, a stolen wallet and a recycling bin all lead to the same categories. Our post on identity theft from trash covers what thieves look for in paper, and our guide to what documents to shred ranks household paper by risk.
How New Hampshire compares with the rest of New England
New Hampshire has one of the lower identity theft rates in New England. Massachusetts, a short drive south, ranked 6th in the country in 2024 at 388 reports per 100,000 people. Vermont, at 101 per 100,000, ranked 49th.
| State (2024) | Identity theft reports | Per 100K | Rank | Fraud and other reports | Per 100K | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | 27,141 | 388 | 6 | 81,434 | 1,165 | 24 |
| Rhode Island | 2,896 | 264 | 18 | 11,776 | 1,075 | 28 |
| Connecticut | 8,502 | 236 | 21 | 43,890 | 1,220 | 20 |
| New Hampshire | 2,079 | 150 | 35 | 14,342 | 1,033 | 30 |
| Maine | 1,746 | 127 | 42 | 12,106 | 879 | 42 |
| Vermont | 651 | 101 | 49 | 5,860 | 908 | 36 |
For southern New Hampshire, the Massachusetts figure is worth a moment. Many people in Salem, Nashua, Hudson and Pelham work, shop and bank across the line, and their information moves with them. A lower home-state rate does not shield a household whose accounts and paperwork pass through a higher-rate area every week.
Rankings also move. Small states can shift several places on a few hundred reports. Treat the rank as context and the count as the real signal: 2,079 New Hampshire reports of misused personal information in one year.
Fraud, scams and the $34.6 million New Hampshire lost
Identity theft is one slice of the FTC’s state data. The rest is fraud, where a consumer was tricked into paying or sharing information, and other complaints such as credit reporting problems. The 2024 New Hampshire page lists the top ten report categories as a share of all reports from the state.
| Rank | Report category (NH, 2024) | Share of NH reports |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Imposter scams | 19% |
| 2 | Identity theft | 13% |
| 3 | Online shopping and negative reviews | 10% |
| 4 | Credit bureaus and information furnishers | 8% |
| 5 | Banks and lenders | 7% |
| 6 | Auto related | 4% |
| 7 | Internet services | 3% |
| 8 | Health care | 3% |
| 9 | Privacy, data security, and cyber threats | 2% |
| 10 | Debt collection | 2% |
Imposter scams led New Hampshire’s list in 2024. The FTC describes these as people “falsely claiming to be a romantic interest, the government, a relative in distress, a well-known business, or a technical support expert to get a consumer’s money.” Nationally, the FTC counted 845,806 imposter scam reports in 2024, and 22 percent of them reported a dollar loss totaling $2.95 billion.
Imposters and identity thieves often work from the same raw material. A scammer who knows your bank, your doctor or the last four digits of your card sounds far more convincing on the phone. Some of those details come from data breaches. Some come from paper that left a house intact.
The national picture, 2024 into 2025
New Hampshire’s numbers sit inside a national trend that the FTC describes in its own words. The 2024 Data Book reports that “In 2024, the Consumer Sentinel Network took in over 6.47 million reports, an increase from 2023.” Of those, 2.6 million were fraud reports (40 percent), 1.1 million were identity theft reports (18 percent) and 2.8 million were other reports (43 percent).
2024, from the Data Book
- 1,135,291 identity theft reports nationwide.
- 449,032 credit card identity theft reports, the top type.
- People reported losing over $12 billion to fraud, “an increase of over $2 billion over 2023.”
- 38 percent of the 2.6 million fraud reports indicated money was lost.
- The median loss for all fraud reports was $497.
2025, from the FTC’s March 2026 release
- On March 25, 2026, the FTC said that “In 2025, the FTC received 3 million fraud reports from consumers, who reported $15.9 billion in losses.”
- That compares with 2.6 million fraud reports and over $12 billion in losses in the 2024 Data Book.
- The release does not include a 2025 identity theft count or state figures. Those arrive with the full Data Book.
The direction is clear even without a 2025 state page. Reported fraud losses rose from over $12 billion in 2024 to $15.9 billion in 2025 nationally. New Hampshire is not immune to a national trend that size. When the FTC publishes 2025 state data, the first thing we will check is whether New Hampshire’s $34.6 million rose with it.
You can follow the data between Data Books. The FTC publishes interactive dashboards at ftc.gov/exploredata, with state maps for fraud and identity theft, and says the online data is updated quarterly. The figures on this page come from the published Data Book because that is the version the FTC fixes for each full year.
Where paper fits in the numbers
Most identity theft headlines are about hacks and phishing. Paper still matters, for a simple reason. The information behind the top three New Hampshire types, card numbers, bank account numbers and Social Security numbers, is printed on statements, tax forms and medical bills that most households keep for years in a closet or basement.
The FTC’s own consumer advice says it directly. Its guide to identity theft tells people to shred documents with personal information before throwing them out, and if you do not have a shredder, to use a marker to black out account numbers. It also says to collect mail from your mailbox as soon as possible.
A home shredder works for a few envelopes a week. It struggles with the boxes that build up when you finish a tax year, clear out a parent’s house or move. That is the paper we see most often from New Hampshire households.
Shred first
Bank and card statements past the IRS retention period, pre-approved credit offers, old pay stubs, expired insurance cards and policy papers, and medical bills or explanations of benefits.
Keep, then shred
Tax returns and their support. The IRS says to keep records 3 years in most cases, 6 years if income was underreported by more than 25 percent and 7 years for a worthless securities or bad debt claim.
Keep for good
Birth and death certificates, marriage and divorce papers, deeds, wills, military discharge papers and Social Security cards. Store them locked, not in a box marked “old paperwork.”
Not paper
Old phones, laptops, hard drives and USB sticks hold the same data. They need physical destruction, which we quote per item through our hard drive destruction service.
Bank paperwork is the pile people ask about most. Our post on whether to shred old bank statements covers how long to keep them when your bank already stores copies online.
What the numbers mean for your household
Statistics only help if they change what you do on a Saturday. Here is the plan we would give a New Hampshire family based on what the state’s reports actually show: card and bank account misuse first, then loans, then phone and utility accounts.
- Clear the paper backlog onceGather every statement, tax year and bill past its keep date. Box it, and bring it to our counter or book a pickup. One job carries one set of per-job fees no matter how many years of paper are in it.
- Freeze your credit at all three bureausThe FTC says a credit freeze is free to place and lift. Contact Experian, TransUnion and Equifax separately. A freeze blocks most new loan, lease and card applications, the types behind a large share of New Hampshire reports.
- Read statements every monthThe FTC lists unexplained charges, withdrawals you did not make and bills that stop arriving as warning signs. A missing statement can mean someone changed your billing address.
- Check your credit reportsLook for accounts you do not recognize. The FTC says accounts in your name that you do not know about can be a sign of identity theft.
- Report fast if it happensThe FTC directs victims to IdentityTheft.gov for a report and a personal recovery plan. Your report also becomes part of the next year’s Consumer Sentinel numbers.
- Keep shredding on a calendarA small box every spring after taxes keeps the backlog from building again. Free community shred days help too, and our list of shred events tracks the ones in southern New Hampshire.
If the worst has already happened, our guide on what to do after identity theft walks through the recovery steps in order, and our identity theft prevention plan covers the habits that keep it from happening twice.
When a business loses your data, New Hampshire law sets a notice duty. RSA 359-C:20 says a person who owns or licenses computerized data containing personal information must notify affected individuals “as soon as possible” when misuse has occurred or is reasonably likely. The statute covers computerized data. Our post on New Hampshire data breach law explains who must notify whom.
What it costs to clear a household backlog
Turning the numbers into action usually means a few boxes. Here is what that costs at our Tewksbury office, about 15 minutes south of the New Hampshire line on Route 38 near I-495. A banker’s box of paper weighs about 30 pounds. Under 10 boxes, you pay 99 cents per pound. At 10 boxes or more, it is $15 per small box or $20 per large banker’s box. Every job adds $34.90: a $14.95 HIPAA filing fee that covers the Certificate of Destruction paperwork and a $19.95 environmental fee for recycling the shred.
| Large banker’s boxes | How it is priced | Drop-off total | Zone 1 pickup total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 box (about 30 lb) | $29.70 by the pound + $34.90 | $64.60 | $194.55 |
| 5 boxes (about 150 lb) | $148.50 by the pound + $34.90 | $183.40 | $313.35 |
| 10 boxes | $200.00 at $20 per box + $34.90 | $234.90 | $364.85 |
| 20 boxes | $400.00 at $20 per box + $34.90 | $434.90 | $564.85 |
Zone 1 pickups cost $129.95 for transport and cover the border towns such as Salem, Pelham, Windham and Plaistow. Zone 2, greater Nashua and Manchester, is $159.95. Zone 3, the Seacoast and points farther north, is $199.95. For other towns the zone is confirmed when you book. Our honest take: for one to five boxes, drive them down on a weekday. For twenty, book the pickup. The full breakdown sits on our shredding rates page, and our drop-off shredding page has the parking and unloading details.
Frequently asked questions
How many identity theft reports did New Hampshire have?
New Hampshire consumers filed 2,079 identity theft reports with the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network in 2024, according to the Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024. That works out to 150 reports per 100,000 residents by the FTC’s own calculation, which ranked New Hampshire 35th among the states. The 2024 book is the latest edition posted on the FTC’s reports page as of November 2026.
What is the most common type of identity theft in New Hampshire?
Credit card misuse. In the 2024 Data Book, credit card identity theft appeared in 38 percent of New Hampshire identity theft reports, followed by other identity theft at 25 percent, bank account at 18 percent, loan or lease at 13 percent and phone or utilities at 10 percent. People can report more than one type, so the shares add up to more than 100.
How much money did New Hampshire residents lose to fraud?
New Hampshire consumers reported $34,625,261 in fraud losses in 2024, shown as $34.6 million on the state page of the FTC’s Data Book. The median loss was $325. The state had 8,838 fraud reports, and 39 percent of them listed a money loss. The FTC counts only reported losses, so the real total is likely higher.
Is New Hampshire’s identity theft rate high or low?
It is in the lower half. At 150 identity theft reports per 100,000 residents in 2024, New Hampshire ranked 35th of 50 states. In New England, Massachusetts ranked 6th at 388, Rhode Island 18th at 264 and Connecticut 21st at 236. Maine ranked 42nd at 127 and Vermont 49th at 101. A lower rank still meant 2,079 New Hampshire reports.
Are there 2025 identity theft numbers for New Hampshire?
Not in a published Data Book yet. On March 25, 2026, the FTC released national 2025 totals, 3 million fraud reports and $15.9 billion in reported losses, but no state pages. The FTC’s interactive dashboards at ftc.gov/exploredata are updated quarterly. We will update this page with 2025 New Hampshire figures when the FTC publishes the full Data Book.
Does throwing away paper really lead to identity theft?
The FTC data records what was misused, not how the thief got it, so no official figure links a share of New Hampshire reports to trash. What is clear is that the top types, credit card and bank account misuse, rely on numbers printed on household statements. The FTC’s consumer advice tells people to shred documents with personal information before throwing them out.
What should I do first if my identity is stolen?
Report it to the FTC at IdentityTheft.gov, which gives you a recovery plan with next steps. Then contact the fraud department of any company where an account was opened or misused, and place a free credit freeze with Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Keep copies of everything you file. Your report also feeds the Consumer Sentinel data that law enforcement uses.
How much does it cost to shred a box of old statements?
At our Tewksbury drop-off, one banker’s box of about 30 pounds costs $29.70 at 99 cents per pound plus $34.90 in per-job fees, or $64.60 in total. Five boxes come to $183.40. At 10 boxes or more, the rate is $20 per large box. Every job includes a Certificate of Destruction. Call (978) 636-0301 with questions.
Sources
- FTC, Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024 (March 2025), State Rankings, New Hampshire state page and Appendix C (checked November 2026)
- FTC, Consumer Sentinel Network reports page, list of published Data Books (checked November 2026)
- FTC press release, March 25, 2026, 2025 fraud reports and losses (checked November 2026)
- FTC Consumer Advice, What To Know About Identity Theft (checked November 2026)
- New Hampshire RSA 359-C:20, Notification of Security Breach Required (checked November 2026)
- IRS, How long should I keep records? (checked November 2026)
Take your household out of next year’s numbers
Box up the statements, tax years and bills you no longer need and bring them to Tewksbury on any weekday, or book a pickup by zone. Every job is cross-cut shredded at our office and comes with a Certificate of Destruction.
Visit or call
1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA 01876. Route 38 near the I-495 interchange, about 15 minutes south of the NH line. Free parking out front, and staff help you unload.
Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pickups and witnessed sessions outside these hours by appointment.
Three ways to shred: walk-in drop-off at 99¢ per pound, pickup by zone, or a witnessed session at $1.99 per pound.
New Hampshire Document Shredding · 1215 Main Street, Unit 115, Tewksbury, MA 01876 · (978) 636-0301 · Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.