The best thing that you can do to deal with identity theft in the first place is to prevent it by being very careful with personal information and passwords. If it's too late for that, however, you will have to go through the necessary steps to recover. First of all, don't panic. It takes a lot of thought, work, and concentration to recover your identity, so panicking will not help.

Once you are calm, the first thing you after your realize that your identity has been stole is contact your local authorities immediately. Tell them as much as you can. After that, you should visit the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Alert site to report the crime to government officials. You can also report the crime to credit bureaus, who will put out fraud alerts. These alerts may not help that much. In fact, they may hurt your reputation with credit card companies and other creditors, so beware if you think you might want a fraud alert on your account. The government organizations will all do what they can to help find the thief.

The FTC may also recommend to you to get all new passwords. They also may monitor your accounts, or just request that you close them and open new accounts. Opening your new account should help you feel more confident that your account is safe.

Two other organizations that you should alert about your situation are the Social Security Administration and the DMV. You should also contact your credit card companies and cancel your credit cards if they are at risk. Make sure you watch over your credit report statements to check that there is no more activity on your account.

Having your online identity stolen will have negative ramifications for a very long time. You will have to fight for secure credit for a very log time after the initial theft. It can really mess up your credit, even if it was great beforehand.

In some cases, you may even need a new social security number. The old number will still be useful, however, so the thief can gain access to the new one with the old number. Be very careful of this.

Guard your information VERY carefully so you don't become a victim of identity theft. Millions of people each year go through it, and I'm sure none of them EVER want it to happen again. You need to protect your information from everyone, even friends and family. Be very careful where you put your information on computers, and always log out fully on public computers. You should also use different passwords for each account you have, and change them periodically.

These tips will help, but there are a variety of other things you can do to keep your private information out of the wrong hands. The government works hard to help, but they can't always protect you and find out who the thieves are.