The US Federal Trade Commission is delaying the enforcement of the new Red Flags Rule until August 1, in order to give creditors and financial institutions more time to develop and implement formal identity theft protection programs.

The Red Flags Rule requires financial institutions and creditors with covered accounts to implement prevention programs to identify, detect and respond to patterns, practices or specific activities that could indicate ID theft. During 2007, the FTC received over 813,000 consumer fraud and identity theft complaints, an increase of 21 percent over 2006.