Reports of identity theft being down again honestly arouses a little suspicion from me.  First off, this article talks about the idea that the sample size was only 5,000 people which I honestly believe not to be enough to conduct an identity theft study on.  Second, I would be interested to see what identity theft strategies and tactics they covered with this sample.  One thing that was interesting though is the idea that identity thieves are using more traditional approaches… snail mail and the telephone.  While the study seems a little off, I would probably agree with thieves going back to more traditional routes.

The total amount of identity fraud dropped for the second straight year in a row, while fraudsters relied on offline channels for their attacks, according to an annual study released on Monday by market intelligence firm Javelin Strategy & Research.

The 2008 Identity Fraud Survey Report, based on interviews with more than 5,000 U.S. adults, found that the incidence of identity fraud fell 12 percent. The damages per incident increased, however, by a quarter to $691. In addition, thieves appeared to fall back to old methods of stealing identity information, using mail and telephone fraud 40 percent of the time, while online attacks only accounted for 19 percent of cases.[more]

Tags: Identity Theft