Dishonesty on credit card applications at three year high

The level of dishonesty on credit card applications is on the rise, according to a recent study by Experian.  Not that Experian is actually known for its accuracy, but for the sake of argument, lets assume Experian's study is accurate.

According to Experian, 44 out of every 10,000 current account applications were found to be fraudulent in the first quarter of this year.  This represents an increase of 23 percent over the last three months of 2011 (which would include the holiday shopping season which to me would seem like a time of the year that would be highest for this sort of fraud).

Current account fraud includes things like misrepresenting income or exaggerating or hiding personal information, such as bad credit histories.

While troubling, another way to look at the figure of 44 out of 10,000 is that its a lot less than Experian's error rate which is somewhere around 2,500 out of every 10,000 credit reports containing serious errors!