Identity Theft is Down. Who Knew?

Last week Javelin issued a study on identity theft it conducted for Wells Fargo, VISA and Checkfree. They found the number of people reporting they have been victims of identity theft has gone down in recent years. Javelin calculated the number of cases of fraudulent use of personal data (such as credit card numbers or social security numbers) per year as follows:

• 10.1 million cases in 2003
• 8.9 million cases in 2005
• 8.4 million cases in 2006

Their conclusions are based on data gathered by a telephone survey. It will be interesting to see whether the TJX incident has any effect on this trend.