Malicious people may be able to obtain personal information (such as credit card numbers, phone numbers, account numbers, and addresses) by stealing your wallet, overhearing a phone conversation, rummaging through your trash (a practice known as dumpster diving), or picking up a receipt at a restaurant that has your account number on it. The mightiest business tycoon down to the lowest ranking employee in a corporation, company, or any enterprise owns a kind of identity number attached to his being member to any social security group, or kind of financial management for use in billings, daily expenditures, and savings. It maybe, identification number on social security, insurance, banks, or anything that could be a means to access individual cash settings, or safekeeping. What steps should you take to protect your identity with credit cards? Ask stores at which you are applying for credit how they safeguard credit applications. Ensure that they are treated as secure documents. Ask businesses how they store and dispose of credit card transaction skips. Ensure that proper safeguards are in place to treat these documents securely. And because identity thieves are real slick, authorities would not know what is happening unless you tell them so. They would not even know that there are two you without you saying that there is. Only by making an effort to seek the proper authorities and report your case will you be able to help fight this growing criminal bandwagon. Internet security starts individually. One must not carelessly give identity in all web forms they encounter in every visited websites. Being in the Internet means being responsible for every data transfer in every keyboard interaction. Every site visit means you are exposing your Internet Protocol (IP) address, where webmasters can look through history and online traffic, enough to know you through location and service provider. 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.