One number bandied with reckless abandon is $48 billion dollars, supposedly the total lost to identity theft. That’s lot of money.

Too much, thinks Dean Foust in “ID Theft: More Hype Than Harm” (Business Week, July 3rd) noting, “…if the estimate were accurate, it would wipe out up to half of the banking industry’s $103 billion profits in 2005.”

A better number, he says, would be $3.2 billion, the amount consumers reported having lost according to a study covering the last half of 2004.

Why then, these fantasmographic billions? Slate muses the fix is in when

1) no constituency exists for keeping the numbers accurate, but a large constituency exists for keeping them high;
2) there is a lack of scholarly interest in the topic; and
3) the numbers have little policy consequence.

A rubric which could also apply to number of fish caught, partners bedded, or number of communists in the state department.

“The (Ongoing) Vitality of Mythical Numbers” [Slate] (Thanks to Chris!)

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