Amen to all of these suggestions!!
The lab I work for put out a neat video presentation on "Identity Theft" which outlined a lot of the preventive measures mentioned here at Pet Talk. Years ago, my husband bought a shredder and he makes it his sworn daily duty to shred everything that will fit into it, even junk mail. We are now on our third shredder and the only time we've ever had a credit card problem was when a hacker got into the online files of an E-business we used and got all of their credit card numbers. They promptly notified the bank who then notified us. We changed our credit card numbers right away and since then have not had a problem. I am grateful for a husband who diligently reviews every piece of mail and financial correspondence we get, not even a five-cent misappropriation on our phone bill goes unnnoticed and unchallenged! If it were up to me to sort all of this out, I'd probably be in hock up to my eyeballs and the target of every scammer this side of the Mississippi.