Incidences of ID Theft Decline, But Losses per Victim Increase

The Wall Street Journal did a brief, but good article on ID theft on January 30. The basic premise is that the number of victims is lower but the amount of losses per victim it going up. My take on this is that ID theft statisics are usually really overstated or just plain inaccurate. What is always missing (and the main question to ask) is not if the data is accurate. It’s how do they define identity theft? Some surveys consider existing credit card fraud as ID theft, others do not. Still, having some statistics are helpful, at least as a benchmark. 

Roughly 8.9 million people, or 4% of U.S. adults, last year learned their personal data had been stolen and used to commit fraud, according to a report due out tomorrow from Javelin Strategy & Research and the Better Business Bureau. That was down from 9.3 million identity-theft cases in 2004, researchers found based on 5,000 telephone interviews and standard polling techniques.

But the average fraud amount per victim rose to $6,383 last year from $5,885 in 2004, for a total annual cost of nearly $56.6 billion.

More: WSJ.com - Incidences of ID Theft Decline, But Losses per Victim Increase.