According to FBI statistics, identity theft is becoming one of America's fastest growing crimes. The truth however, behind this fact is that about 40% of the reports are comprised of mixed credit files as a result of the credit bureaus errors in filing your information and the best part to all this? As if adding insult to injury, they'd want to sell you identity theft insurance to protect your files from such mistakes!

When it comes to the protection of your credit details, the truth is that you don't actually need the identity protection services that credit bureaus offer. With the right information and proper mindset, you'll be able to properly protect your identity from mistakes and errors as well as real identity theft attempts.

There are many ways that you can protect yourself from identity theft, and in this article we will be discussing a few of the attempts that can be made against your account as well as the actions you can take in order to prevent them from happening.

First scenario: Someone trying to open an account in your name
To prevent such a situation from happening one of the first things you need to do is to contact all three credit bureaus and have a fraud alert or a security freeze placed on your account. While both methods will generally be effective in stopping most identity theft attempts, the previous will basically cost you nothing while the latter will require you to pay anywhere from $10-15 per bureau and will need to be renewed from time to time. Shredding your credit statements and any other pieces of paper that might give away personal information as well as putting a lock on your mailbox will serve as good deterrents to identity theft as well.

Second scenario: Someone trying to take over one of your already existing accounts
This happens when someone who knows you quite well tries calling one of your credit companies and misleads them into thinking that it is you asking for a replacement on your credit card. Most companies will usually have no problem giving this out as long as all of the information they require are given by the person on the other line. To prevent this from happening, the easiest method you can take would be to ask your lender to provide you with a pin code that you or anyone else should provide in order to gain access into the account.

Preventing identity theft is not that difficult as long as you know how. The information given above are just a few of the actions that you can take to stop malicious intents on your credit or personal files so make sure you learn more as there are many different online sites that can provide you the information you need.