Phonebusters came out with its October report and I wanted to pass along an update so that you could get some more information on the state of identity theft in Canada. September 2009 was another bad month for identity theft - Phonebusters reported that 808 people called in to report identity theft. These people lost a total of $1,143,206.95.

When you compare those numbers to August, you will see that the number of cases reported dropped while the total stolen went up a little bit. In September, 1,468 people reported being victims, but they only reported having been defrauded out of $1,056,880.49. If you work out these averages, it means that in August, the average loss was $719.95. In September, the average loss increased to $1,414.86. The average loss per case increased by over 90%...in one month.

Finally, with one full quarter left in 2009, we are barely over one million dollars away from last year's total. I suspect that we will pass that dubious record sometime in October.