About 3 percent of households were hit by some sort of ID theft during the first six months of 2004, according a DOJ. According to a comprehensive survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), identity theft is affecting millions of households in the U.S each year and costing an estimated $6.4 billion per year. The data comes from the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey, which interviews members of 42,000 households across the country every six months to better understand the nature, frequency and consequences of crime. The DOJ has been compiling this information for more than 30 years, but this marks the first time it has asked households about identity theft, said survey author Katrina Baum, a statistician with the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.