But the good news was balanced by results showing that young adults, despite their tech-savviness, are at greater risk for ID fraud, and that a fraud-detection "digital divide" separating the wealthy and the poor was also emerging, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.

"Lower-income people (less than $15,000 per year) are less likely to be victimized by ID fraud, but it tends to last twice as long," said James Van Dyke, president of the Pleasanton, Calif.-based research firm. And the trauma of fraud tends to cause poorer people, whether the fraud was committed online or not, to shun the Internet and other technology that could potentially cut their risk of ID fraud.

"Lower-income people essentially run away from computers," he said.

The latest annual survey from Javelin found that total ID fraud in 2006 added up to $49 billion, down from $55.4 billion in 2005. The percentage of people affected by fraud has steadily fallen from the first survey in 2003, when it was 4.7 percent, to 3.7 percent last year.

"The problem hasn't gone away, but we have turned a corner," Van Dyke said.