Last month, your grandmother went on a bit of a spending spree. She bought three ties (silk), a nice men’s blazer (navy blue pinstripe, 42 R), the Breville JE900 professional juice fountain (and the optional apple corer attachment), three custom computers from Dell (with three 20” flatpanel monitors), a pair of Tour GT900 inline speed skates and the George Foreman GR26CB Family Size+ grill (with cookbook). What? Didn’t you realize grandma had such expensive taste? Actually, neither did she; your mother’s mother has been the victim of identity theft. Despite overblown hype in the media, identity theft is real, and a clever criminal needs surprisingly little personal information—sometimes just a name and address, maybe a phone number—to apply for credit cards, take out loans and more. All in someone else’s name. Anyone can become a victim, even dearest grandma.

It’s not just for those hooligans on the Internet anymore

Luckily with some thought and a few new habits, you can make stealing your identity more difficult for a common thief. But before we jump to prevention, let’s take a look at a common misconception. Identity theft has been in the news frequently of late, but too many people think that if they don’t purchase items online they’re not at risk. Wrong. In fact, only about 12 percent of identity-theft cases involve the Internet. That’s right. Whereas roughly 68 percent of identity crimes are committed with identity information obtained in the nonvirtual world — by theft of wallets or checkbooks.

Some prevention tips

Though by no means exhaustive, here’s a list of things you can do to help keep your identity safe.

• Use a credit card, not a debit card. Credit cards usually will reimburse you for fraudulent charges.
• Don’t give out your personal information unless absolutely necessary. It rarely is.
• Check your mail daily. Stolen mail is a gold mine for potential identity thieves.
• Be suspicious of missing credit cards or bank statements.
• When you are online, surf behind a firewall. Also, use your encryption options if your connection is wireless.
• PINs and passwords should not be intuitive. Your birthday or your initials plus 123 are not difficult to crack.
• Monitor your credit regularly. U.S. law requires each of the three major credit bureaus to provide a credit report once a year upon request. (However, checking your score will not change it.) Make the request.

The three major credit reporting agencies

• Equifax, (800) 685-1111, www.equifax.com;
• Experian, (888) 397-3742, www.experian.com; and
• TransUnion, (800) 916-8800, www.transunion.com.