What are the chances that you will become the victim of identity theft? Well, about 10 million people had their identities stolen last year. The sad news is that solutions are there; we just don’t know about them. Financial institutions that could promote awareness and implement protection programs simply haven’t. Having the ability to freeze your credit is one of the most important steps once ID theft has occurred. Right now, just a handful of states allow you to do that. California, Vermont, Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, Washington and Maine have credit freezing laws. In California, you can even do a proactive freeze. You have to go through a lot of work to unfreeze your credit, but some people are willing to do it. There are varying degrees of identity theft and some are harder to clear up than others. Nationwide Mutual Insurance found that one in three people are unable to get their good names back once it’s happened. So what can you do? Don’t carry a checkbook, buy a shredder and “opt out” of credit card pre-approvals are three of the best ways to prevent it. Just call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT to stop pre-approvals. You will have to give your social security number and that is fine. Lastly, you want to get a copy of your credit report at least once a year. It’s free now, so just go to annualcredit report.com.