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Identity Theft Resource Center 2026 Trends in Identity Report: Crimes Become “Multi-Layered” as Hacked Devices Overtake Scams for Working-Age Adults

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The ITRC reports that one in four identity crime victims manage multiple incidents; recovery system fails those with greatest financial harm

SAN DIEGO, June 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the Identity Theft Resource Center®, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization established to prevent and reduce the impact of identity theft, scams and fraud, released its fifth annual Trends in Identity Report, which reveals a fundamental shift in the identity crime landscape. The 2026 Trends in Identity Report examines identity concerns reported by victims of identity theft, fraud and scams, as well as by individuals seeking prevention advice. It is supported by the ITRC’s Alliance for Identity Resilience.

In the report, the ITRC outlines the identity crimes reported to the ITRC from April 1, 2025, through March 31, 2026, and how criminals convinced people to willingly share information, as well as how stolen information was used to open new accounts.

According to the ITRC’s 2026 Trends in Identity Report, identity crimes have evolved from isolated events into “multi-layered” crises, with 25.6 percent of victims now managing two or more concurrent incidents, up from 23.5 percent the previous year. The report, grounded in the experiences of more than 6,000 individuals, highlights a milestone in compromise methods: for the first time, unauthorized device access has surpassed scams as the primary threat for adults aged 35–64.

Download the ITRC’s 2026 Trends in Identity Report

“Identity crimes are no longer isolated, single events,” said Mona Terry, Chief Operating & Programs Officer for the Identity Theft Resource Center. “They are becoming increasingly complex. It is not just about the number of crimes, but also the pattern they follow. A single compromise can trigger a chain reaction that spreads across multiple accounts and institutions, making it much harder for people to recover.”

Key Findings in the 2026 Trends in Identity Report Include:

Unauthorized access to computers and mobile devices increased by 78 percent year-over-year from 15.3 percent of all identity compromises to 27.2 percent of all compromises. Over the same period, scams involving the sharing of personal information declined from 43.1 percent to 36.1 percent of compromises.While 53 percent of victims with no financial loss reported a resolution, only nine (9) percent of those with any financial impact were able to resolve their cases. Among those who experienced three or more financial impacts, zero (0) percent reported a resolution.Fraudulent employment is now the most common crime against minors, accounting for 40 percent of misuse cases for children and dependents.Attempted misuse cases caught by financial institutions rose by 26.8 percent, suggesting that while automated fraud detection is improving for credit accounts, systems for employment and government benefits are lagging.

The ITRC also reported the following:

Account-problems scams are the highest-volume scam type; 74 percent of victims shared high-value personally identifiable information (PII), the highest rate of any scam category. Job and employment scams were the second most common and the most intensive in terms of information harvested.Of the attempted misuse cases reported to the ITRC, 62.1 percent involved new account applications, and 37.9 percent involved attempted account takeovers. Credit cards accounted for 41 percent of all attempted misuse by account type, followed by checking accounts at 17.7 percent and personal loans at eight-point-five (8.5) percent.Colorado residents reported the highest rate of multi-layered incidents (49 percent), while Illinois saw nearly triple the national average for fraudulent employment.

“Every finding in the 2026 Trends in Identity Report comes from the experiences of people who turned to the ITRC for help,” Terry said. “We hear from so many victims who feel overwhelmed and have nowhere else to turn for support. That is exactly why we do this work. We provide the expert, one-on-one assistance people need to find a clear path forward at no cost.”

Consumers and victims can receive free support and guidance from a knowledgeable live advisor by texting or calling 888.400.5530 or visiting www.idtheftcenter.org to live chat. 

2026 Trends in Identity Report Methodology

All data in the 2026 Trends in Identity Report is based on individuals who contacted the ITRC between April 1, 2025, and March 31, 2026. During this period, the ITRC received 9,253 cases from 6,188 unique individuals. Contacts were received by phone, chat, email, text-to-chat, web form and letter.

This data reflects the experiences of individuals who chose to contact the ITRC. It is not a random sample of all identity crime victims and should not be interpreted as a measure of identity crime prevalence in the United States. The individuals in our data found the ITRC through referral partners, online searches, government agencies, financial institutions and other channels. Their experiences may differ from those of individuals who did not contact the ITRC or who sought assistance elsewhere.

See the Methodology section inside the report for more information.

About the Alliance for Identity Resilience

The Alliance for Identity Resilience was established as an advisory board by the Identity Theft Resource Center. The advisory board operates within the framework of the ITRC’s mission to empower individuals and businesses through education, support and innovative strategies. The primary purpose of AIR is to advise the ITRC on matters related to identity crime. The board serves as a consultative body to foster collaborative discussions, advance thought leadership and advocacy, identify emerging challenges, offer guidance on projects and initiatives, facilitate industry collaboration, and propose holistic solutions to enhance identity protection and victim recovery services.

About the Identity Theft Resource Center

Founded in 1999, the Identity Theft Resource Center® is a national nonprofit organization established to prevent and reduce the impact of identity theft, scams and fraud. Through public and private support, the ITRC provides no-cost victim assistance and consumer education through its website live chat, idtheftcenter.org, and toll-free phone number 888.400.5530. The ITRC also equips consumers and businesses with information about recent data breaches through its data breach tracking tool. The ITRC offers help to specific populations, including the deaf/hearing impaired and blind/vision impaired communities. 

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SOURCE Identity Theft Resource Center

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USI Launches AI Smart Camera Solution to Accelerate Smart Manufacturing

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NANTOU, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — USI today announced its next-generation AI Smart Camera solution, a comprehensive edge AI and vision platform that empowers manufacturers to accelerate digital transformation through AI-driven quality inspection, process automation, logistics optimization, and smart factory initiatives.

Moving beyond conventional camera hardware, USI’s AI Smart Camera integrates a high-performance, low-power edge computing platform, high-resolution imaging technology, and proprietary AI vision software to deliver real-time image analysis and actionable insights at the edge. Designed for modern manufacturing environments, the solution enables automated inspection, early defect detection, and faster, more consistent quality decisions. By reducing inspection costs, improving production efficiency, and enhancing product quality, it helps manufacturers accelerate their transition toward smarter and more autonomous production operations.

For manufacturers, the journey to AI-powered vision extends beyond object detection and defect identification. Success depends on turning AI from a proof-of-concept project into a production-ready solution that delivers consistent performance, scales efficiently, and seamlessly adapts to evolving manufacturing requirements.

USI addresses this challenge with an integrated AI Smart Camera platform that supports the complete AI development lifecycle—from data collection and dataset generation to model training and deployment. Its no-code/low-code AI model training platform further simplifies development, enabling customers to develop and deploy vision applications with greater efficiency and less dependence on specialized AI expertise.

Key features of USI AI Smart Camera include:

Real-Time Edge AI Processing: Performs image analysis and AI inference at the edge, enabling fast visual decisions and timely responses without relying solely on centralized computing.High-Quality Imaging for Industrial Inspection: Combines a high-resolution, low-lux-capable camera module with powerful Edge AI computing to support demanding inspection and machine vision applications.Faster AI Deployment: Integrates hardware, embedded software, and AI vision development tools into a production-ready platform, helping customers shorten development cycles and accelerate the transition from proof of concept to production.Flexible AI Vision Applications: Supports object detection, defect identification, OCR, key-part positioning and tracking, assembly verification, product classification, and operation behavior detection and analysis.Seamless Integration with Industrial Environments: Ruggedized design with industrial-grade interfaces, including Ethernet, Power over Ethernet (PoE), HDMI, and MicroSD, ensuring seamless compatibility with existing equipment, machine vision systems, and automation platforms.

By automating visual inspection and defect identification, the AI Smart Camera can reduce reliance on manual QA operations while improving inspection consistency. Its real-time visual intelligence can also provide actionable data to help manufacturers quickly identify process deviations, reduce defect rates, and lower production costs. The platform can further serve as an intelligent visual decision layer for automated production, providing real-time visual guidance and feedback to robotic systems. This enables manufacturers to move beyond inspection automation toward more responsive and autonomous production processes.

“Demand for AI-powered vision applications is growing rapidly across the manufacturing sector. Today’s manufacturers are seeking more than just camera hardware. They need complete, end-to-end solutions that can be deployed quickly and deliver measurable business value,” said Justin Chang, Director of the Vertical Mobility Solution Center at USI. “By combining advanced Edge AI capabilities with our integrated vision platform, we enable customers to accelerate the adoption of smart manufacturing, quality inspection, and industrial automation applications. Our solution helps bring AI from proof of concept to production faster and more efficiently.”

As a global ODM partner, USI combines expertise in product design, manufacturing, and Edge AI integration to deliver complete solutions tailored to customer requirements. The AI Smart Camera is already deployed within USI’s own manufacturing operations, providing a production-proven reference platform for industrial AI vision applications.

Building on this experience, USI can customize AI vision solutions around customers’ specific production environments and business requirements, helping shorten development time, reduce implementation risks, and accelerate their smart manufacturing journey.

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/usi-launches-ai-smart-camera-solution-to-accelerate-smart-manufacturing-302871089.html

SOURCE USI

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Media’s future tense in AI-driven world

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BEIJING, Sept. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — This is an op-ed from China Daily.

Philip K. Dick’s 1969 novel Ubik imagined a door that demands payment before opening — a fantasy then, but eerily prescient in today’s AI-driven world. While Elon Musk predicts AI will bring global abundance, for traditional media that abundance has already arrived — with devastating consequences.

The question is no longer whether AI changes media, but what role professional journalism can play when information is plentiful, yet truth, context and reality grow scarce.

Dick’s own life — overlooked, depressed and penniless — belied his extraordinary foresight. In The Man in the High Castle, he imagined alternate realities. Today, personalized algorithms, misinformation and AI-generated content make such alternate realities all too real.

Yet Dick’s vision also offers hope through an unexpected link with the ancient Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes). Both suggest reality is not fixed, but a pattern of ever-shifting possibilities. The I Ching asks not “What will happen?” but “What situation am I in, and how should I respond to its changing pattern?” That, arguably, is precisely the role media must adopt in the AI age: providing orientation, credibility and meaning when information itself has lost its scarcity and economic value.

Not all sci-fi is dystopian. Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics embodied faith that humans could impose rules on technology — yet today’s AI race is far more complex. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek imagined a moneyless, post-scarcity civilization; AI may be bringing that closer, just as Google’s free search and maps once upended the world.

So where does this leave traditional media? In a Dickian dystopia, media could become a modern-day I Ching — helping people navigate uncertainty, distinguish illusion from reality, and make informed choices when no single truth prevails. In a Roddenberry-esque future, media could guide humanity on how to live wisely with AI-driven abundance.

The practical challenge remains: financing itself in the first scenario and inspiring itself in the second. As Dick warned in The Man in the High Castle, humanity’s “destiny lies in the hands of a few men.” We can only hope some of them are traditional media editors.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/medias-future-tense-in-ai-driven-world-302871740.html

SOURCE China Daily

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New agentic AI platform sounds death knell for manual presentation tools

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Sembly AI launches Sembly 3.0 in biggest evolution since 2019

SYDNEY, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Sembly AI launches Sembly 3.0, an agentic AI platform that transforms an organisation’s documents, meetings, and CRM content into finished, fully branded presentations, proposals, case studies and reports in minutes in over 45 languages.

The launch marks the company’s biggest evolution since it was founded in 2019, repositioning Sembly as an “AI execution layer” for businesses. It turns everyday business knowledge into the finished materials companies use to sell, deliver and communicate.

Users simply need to specify their goal (eg, “Sell my services”) and the client’s website, then watch Sembly get to work: pulling information from business materials, deriving appropriate branding, researching the customer, and producing a bespoke on-brand pitch deck.

“Prompts make people think about how to talk to AI. But dialogue lets them focus on what they want to accomplish,” said Gil Makleff, CEO and co-founder of Sembly AI. “That makes creating business documents faster and more efficient, turning time saved into real business impact.”

“Manually creating presentations is a thing of the past,” said Artem Koren, Chief Product & Technology Officer and co-founder of Sembly AI. “Business materials are the substrate of decision-making: they are how companies communicate, persuade and decide. Sembly 3.0 changes how they are made entirely.”

“Your customers want to hear how you serve them in their specific world and their specific situation, and Sembly makes that possible for every customer,” Koren added. “With Sembly 3.0, your results are as good as how clearly you can state your goal. That’s all you’re limited by.”

Early users of Sembly 3.0 report saving two to three weeks of work on reports and presentations that traditionally pass through multiple hands before they are delivery-ready.

Heorhii Tulchyi, Chief Technology Officer at market research company, Bell & Holmes, is one of those early users of Sembly 3.0.

He said: “Sembly has fundamentally changed how I prepare presentations and client communications. It has saved my team and me weeks of work and dramatically accelerated how we turn ideas and information into polished deliverables. I haven’t seen anything else on the market quite like it.”

Sembly 3.0 is available from today at www.sembly.ai.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/new-agentic-ai-platform-sounds-death-knell-for-manual-presentation-tools-302870013.html

SOURCE Sembly AI

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