Crooks are becoming more inventive in how they make off with your identity. Courage is not a must any longer, nor is guns and knives or any physical mischief. Now days it may possibly be your neighbor or a person you pass in the mall. We can by no means be too cautious with our identity.

Whatever system the crooks use, mail theft, dumpster diving, account invasion, the end result is the same: An inexperienced person like you is ripped off.

Think about this for a second; what is a very low-tech system use by thieves to pull off identity theft? It is basically stealing mail from unsecured mailboxes. Thieves have been stealing mail out of unsecured mail boxes for many years; but it has only been in the current years that thieves have come to comprehend the earnings to be won from the financial information they can get. How protected is your mail box?

Mail theft happens most of the time, according to statistics, at places where unprotected and easy to get to mailboxes are these are mailboxes that do not have a lock and in public places. Does your mailbox fall into this type?

Thieves can and carry out, via outgoing stolen mail, obtain enough valuable information to start a new account under the victims (your) name. Crooks can take pre-approved credit card application, change the address to a new address, and then send it in. Criminals can steal a credit card statement, lift the account number, and buy goods or services. A thief can watch your incoming mail for a new credit card or ATM card, steal it, and charge thousands of dollars to it in one afternoon.

What about the red flag on your mailbox? One mail carrier said, The postal service call those red flags the steal me flags. Thieves can and will do much damage with what they remove from your mailbox. Start taking your out-going mail to the post office or drop US mail boxes on your way to or from work.

I do not have all the answers to the identity theft crisis we are faced with everyday. However, I have learned that "knowledge is power" and the more knowledge we have on the way identity thieves work, the more power we have to fight back and protect ourselves. I have built a new website that I call Answers to Identity Theft. There you will find information to build your knowledge against Identity Theft. Get the books and sign-up for the Identity Theft Newsletter. Please check out my blog as well, it is also named, you guessed it, Answers to Identity Theft (blog). I would love to hear from you. We are all in this together; so if we can help each other, then together we will win this identity theft crisis. If you would like a unique version of this article or other articles on Identity Theft for your website, justClick Here for Unique Articles.