Name, Rank and Social Security Number

 Theft of identity is the fastest growing crime in the United States. The US Secret Service calculated that national customers lose $745 million per year as a result of identity theft. According to the Identity Theft Resource Centre, the average victim only spends $1,000 for the clearance of their credit records for 607 hours.

Identity thefts use a variety of tactics to acquire your personal information. They can receive information from companies or other institutions by stealing it; by bribing an employee with access to data; by hacking in records; or by containing information from employees. Once identity thefts acquire your personal data, they may exploit it on your behalf to perpetrate fraud or steal.

How can you know whether you are an identity theft victim? Some signs include unexplained charges or withdrawals from your financial accounts; the arrival of bills or other mail, (the thief may have submitted an address change); the denial of a credit application for no obvious reason; or the beginning to call debt collectors about goods or services that you did not buy.

Your computer might be a goldmine for an identity theft with personal information. Consider protecting yourself and your computer from identity theft:

•Virus prevention software often updated. Consider automatically updating your virus prevention software. Patches can also be checked and downloaded to your computer by the Windows XP operating system.
•Do not open files that foreigners provide you, click websites or download programs from people or companies you are not familiar with.
Why Uses a firewall program in particular if you use a high-speed cable/DSL Internet connection that connects your computer 24 hours a day to the Internet.
·Provision of personal or financial information only via a secured website of an organization. A lock icon in the browser status bar or a website URL that starts with "https" (the "s" is safe) can give additional protection, albeit not foolproof.
·Don't save your laptop financial information unless absolutely required.
•Deletion before disposal of all personal information contained on a computer. A wipe" utility application is recommended to overwrite the whole hard disk.
·Check with an educational anti-fraud organization like CardCops (www.cardcops.com). Card Cops operates a website to help consumers discover if their card details have been stolen. You monitor "chat rooms" on the internet, where identity thieves trade illegally and sell credit card details stolen. CardCops sends the information to law enforcement agencies but also allows users to visit their database to determine whether the number of cards has been stolen. The portal discovered more than 100,000 stolen credit cards during the first two months of operation.

As with any crime, you cannot totally control whether you become a victim, but can take efforts to decrease your risk by being careful and reducing access to your personal information from outside.