5 Signs You Might Be a Victim of Identity Theft

It's not something most of us want to think about, but identity theft is a byproduct of our technologically advanced age, when the ability to find personal data about you is frankly, dead easy. In the late 90's then-MIT doctoral candidate Latanya Sweeney concluded that three pieces of information easily gleaned from the web - a person's postal code, date of birth and gender - would be enough to correctly identify fully 87 percent of the United States population. She says: "So if I know only those three things about you, I can identify you by name 87 percent of the time. Pretty cool." Scary? Oh yeah. And it's only gotten easier what with the advent of social media, and many (most?) of us divulging far too much about ourselves to all and sundry in our personal networks.

With all that data out there, you need to know the warning signs that your identity might have been stolen. Here are five red flags that should have you sit up and take notice:

SLIDESHOW: FIVE SIGNS YOUR IDENTITY MIGHT HAVE BEEN STOLEN