Wade: The occurrences of identity theft are indeed broad and scary. Let me give you a personal example.

A friend of mine found a job posting for a well-known, reputable company in the classified ads of the local newspaper and went to the Web site listed. The site looked legitimate so he filled in a job application with all of his personal information.

It turns out that the site, while looking real, was a scam to steal personal information and divert funds through his bank accounts. Thankfully he was only out a couple hundred dollars, but the disruption to his life was huge.

He cancelled his credit cards, notified his bank and he and his wife spent countless sleepless nights worrying about what else was going to happen to them.

Thankfully for them it ended there. Or so we think.

This is not just an "online" problem; there are plenty of ways that thieves obtain personal information through physical and online means. Here are some examples:

• Stealing your wallet or purse: A thief steals your wallet or purse containing your driver's license, credit cards and debit cards.

• Stealing your mail: Thieves steal bank and credit card statements, pre-approved credit offers, telephone calling cards and tax information from your mailbox. One way they do this is to divert your mail to another location using a change of address form.

• Dumpster diving: Thieves rummage through residential or business trash looking for personal information from bills or bank, credit card, and insurance statements.

• Stealing work and business records: Thieves get your business or personnel records at work or from a place of business that you have provided your information. They then either use the information themselves or provide it to another person who then uses your personal information.

• Social Engineering: Thieves fraudulently pose as your employer, landlord or someone else with a legitimate need for your personal information. A variation of this is that a thief pretends to be you or a legitimate requestor and persuades business employees to provide them with your personal information.

• Internet theft: Thieves may obtain personal information from unsecured Web sites that you may have visited, from fake sites that they set up to collect information from unsuspecting people, or from guessing passwords that are easily determined.

David: That's just terrifying. You don't normally suspect ads in your local newspaper. What victims do to recover?

Wade: If you believe that are the victim of identity theft, you should immediately contact the fraud departments of any one of the three credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) to initiate a fraud report.

Then you should close any accounts they feel may be compromised, and challenge any new accounts that may have been opened under your identity. As part of Sereniti's policy, victims are issued an ID Theft Recovery Kit from AIG that includes form letters to facilitate these steps.