Identify theft is a multibillion USD crime in the USA. Worldwide who knows how much loss it causes?

What, if anything, do you do to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of hacking or identify theft.

In the USA there are three major credit reporting agencies. With each of them it's possible to freeze ones credit reporting account. What that means is no one can open a credit account in a frozen name when there's such a freeze in place. it cost a few USD to make that freeze as well as to unfreeze it with a pin code given to the maker of the request.

I've rarely ( can't remember a single time) seen a shredder in Thailand or Southeast Asia which means all personal information given at hotels, banks, immigration and etc probably ends up at a land fill somewhere.

I have freezes in place. What kinds of things do you do to protect yourself?

Bill Gates got hacked!

Was he? First time I heard this.

What kinds of things do you do to protect yourself?

What you're describing here isn't really much an IT problem but rather a financial/banking one, and almost exclusively limited to the US.

In my home country, identity theft is a very strange and foreign concept because opening a line of credit requires way more than a mere couple of easily obtainable personal information. That 'freeze' you describe sounds kind of an add on to reach the same level of security. I'd assume it would be really enough.

This is one of the potential problems arising from the new form for Immigration reporting / extending

Damn, what does the title from the OP have to do with Bill G getting hacked?

Must have missed something... this title looks just like the crap titles I end up getting duped reading in the morning when I sign out of my hotmail and get sent to the MSN homepage... Crap sensationalism