There might be scavengers loitering around for the purpose of following up garbage to get checking account numbers, and other data. 3. Originally approved Credit Cards, or renewals of the same, may be delivered by servicemen who may try to get your personal data that are not commonly asked, such as birthdays, or expiry dates of your card. On credit card identity theft, it could mean that such criminals can use your account for their own purchases. How can such crime happen to someone like you? If you use your credit card on your regular purchases, there are a lot of chances that criminal can get hole of your credit and personal records. Now imagine this-you are hounded by credit collectors for purchases you have not made, or worse-you are wrongfully apprehended for a crime you most certainly did not commit. How did this happen? Your personal information and sensitive numbers were never physically separated from you. Unfortunately, carelessly giving away your social security number or other sensitive information may put you at risk for identity theft. No matter how many kinds of imposed protection is done to avoid intrusion of privacy through chains of private information through government and non-governmental listings, the problem is sieved by the clever manipulations of the offenders. Free enterprise in the U.S. made this dilemma very rampant in every exchange of business transactions through various means of handling and disseminating cash flow. Identity theft continues to be a threat to many individuals in America and across the globe. Unfortunately, although the social security number is supposed to provide one with security, it has been found most often to be the cause of identity theft. For this reason, one must be very careful in giving out one's social security number to prevent identity theft. One of the best way you can do to protect yourself from identity number theft is to avoid providing personal information from individual you talk to, especially to strangers. Giving personal information to people you do not know can have very disastrous consequences for you. 2. If you are in a public place, be very discreet about the financial events happening in your life.