The SmartSwipe Online Security, Shopping and Technology Blog

Phonebusters published some interesting information on their web site and I thought that I should share it with all of you. They released their statistics for December 2009 and those stats include a snapshot of the year in identity theft. Those statistics seem to indicate that fewer people fell victim to identity theft, but the average loss was much greater.

In 2008, 11,511 reported being the victims of identity theft. These people were victimized out of a total of $9,697,199.05. In 2009, only 11,135 people reported being the victims of identity theft but they lost a total of $10,993, 348.72. If you do the math, this means that in 2009, the average identity theft victim lost $987.28.

So, in 2009 the number of victims dropped by just over 3%, but the total amount stolen jumped by over 13%. It is encouraging that the number of victims who reported identity theft dropped, but I don't like the fact that the amount stolen jumped up so much.

Finally, I know that I say this every time that I write about Phonebusters, but I want to put these stats in perspective. In Canada, it is not mandatory to report incidents of identity theft to Phonebusters - the people who report do so voluntarily. Because of this, these numbers are not complete and they are only truly useful for showing trends.