Protecting Identity is More Than Protecting Individuality Do you remember that Hollywood blockbuster several years ago involving a woman that needed to keep running because of a compromised identity with information taken from the Internet? Or more recently, there was yet another Hollywood offering that shows a regular family man's ideal home and family turned into a suspense-filled arena for a bank heist because of sensitive information gathered from the family trash? For this reason, one must be very careful in giving out one's social security number to prevent identity theft. Of course there are extreme measures available like shredding all official documents that contain sensitive information such as one's social security number before disposing of them in your garbage can. For your credit accounts, you can report it to the different fraud agencies who can issue a fraud alert on your account. This alert would notify creditors to contact you every time a new account is being made under your name. You can also have your affected credit accounts closed to stop further violations. This can be a major problem for anyone because not only will you have to worry about your personal properties like credit cards and bank accounts, you also have to think about the fact that someone else is using your name and your reputation to do god-knows what. According to the FTC, there are more than 160,000 reported cases of identity fraud in the country in 2002. They trick you into giving them the information over the telephone or by email. They buy the information either on the Internet or from someone who might have stolen it. They steal it from a loan or credit application form you filled out or from files at a hospital, bank, school or business that you deal with. Never endorse any possible letter in your mailbox, if you go on vacation unless to a trusted friend or relative. Your letter bearing your address might not get into your hands at all, bits of essential information, leaked instead. 5. Always be aware if you re on call at a public telephone, somebody else may over hear you if you are transmitting some confidential matters concerning your personal identity.