Identity theft is terrible. It’s ruins your day, week, month, and probably more.

The average data breach in 2022 cost a company $9.44 million and took 277 days to contain.

To determine where Americans are most susceptible to such crimes, WalletHub, a personal Finance website, compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia on 14 key items. The data range from identity-theft complaints per capita to the average loss amount due to fraud.

I live in Washington state. It’s numbers are:

• 38^th – Identity-theft complaints per capita.
• 22^nd – Fraud and other complaints per capita.
• 18^th – State security-freeze laws for minors’ credit reports.
• 47^th – Persons arrested for fraud per capita.

Washington’s overall rank in the analysis is 45^th.

The five jurisdictions that top the list and where residents are the most vulnerable to identify theft are the District of Columbia, Delaware, Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Colorado.

Those in the bottom five spots, the least vulnerable, are Wyoming, Maine, Indiana, Arkansas, and Montana.

To avoid identity theft and fraud, use strong passwords for financial accounts and use two-step verification, don’t open emails you don’t recognize, don’t download files from questionable sources, and don’t enter financial or personal information into websites that don’t have the “https” in their URLs.

See WalletHub’s “2022’s States Most Vulnerable to Identity Theft & Fraud” for more information.