It’s too easy to say – as I have – that if you’re dumb enough to tell strangers your bank account number over the phone, 
having your money stolen isn’t your biggest problem. But identity theft doesn’t prey only on the dumb, the naïve and the overly trusting. We’re all subject to it. We owe it to ourselves and our parents and our children to become wise to the wicked ways of identity thieves.
"Last year almost 9 million Americans were robbed of private financial information, and half didn’t know how the damage was done – their credit cards maxed out, bank accounts cleaned out, or credit ratings sunk after criminals took out loans in their names," writes Sid Kirchheimer in Scams Unmasked, for AARP The Magazine, May/June 2006. "Criminals posing as other people last year ripped off a record $56 billion in cash, goods and services."
It’s not just the latest high-tech gizmos that make us susceptible, either. Some of the techniques these thieves use are as old as ink. We’ll review some of them over the next few days. You may be surprised how easy it is.
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