You should never give your Social Security number to anyone unless they have a good reason for needing it. Watch for people who may try to eavesdrop and overhear the information you give out orally. Carefully destroy the documents that you throw out, especially those with sensitive or identifying information. Identity theft is a term used to refer to all types of crime in which someone illegally obtains and uses another person's personal data in a way that involves lies or deception, mostly for economic gain. Identity thefts is one of the fastest growing crimes in the country and what can be really frustrating about this is that you cannot really know how fast it is growing. They establish cellular phone service in your name.They open a bank account in your name and write bad checks on that account. How Easy is it to Get Personal Information? The amount of information available on the Internet about you and those you know is almost unbelievable. Various companies offer services that provide address, criminal, civil, and professional history as well as a list of assets and bank account numbers. 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. This is done to prevent thieves from finding this essential information in your trash. It is kind of extreme though because this scenario seems straight out of a recent Hollywood offering but it does happen and in this case, it is better to err in the side of caution than suffer the tremendous headache, confusion and gigantic problems that besiege victims of identity theft. You can easily check your existing credit cards and see fraudulent purchases. What about checking the accounts that you don't know about? Identity thefts may open new accounts for mobile phones, credit cards and even make larger purchases like buying an apartment and you won't know it unless the credit collectors finally trace the bills back to you after the perpetrators run off with the bills. In as much as the online services is adapted, emerged the rampant flow of all kinds of thieves to victimize any unfortunate subject inside the e-biz conglomerates. Hackers, phishers or spoofers operate deceptions by way of scam messages in the websites. The virtual use of pseudonyms makes possible increase of online thieves.