The question of how to prevent identity theft is really not as difficult to answer as many people think. The biggest cause of identity theft is people having their wallets, purses and credit cards stolen and not immediately filing a report and cancelling all cards. In addition it is essential to also report your social security card theft if it was in the wallet or purse. According to identity theft prevention experts the best advice is to remove all unnecessary personal information from your wallet and keep it in a safe place such as safe or safety deposit box. Never write your PIN or personal identification numbers on your debit or credit cards or carry the information with these cards in the same location. Avoid using your birthday, house address or other easy to guess numbers as your PIN access codes. Finally, check your credit reports and have a fraud alert notice put on each. This will ensure that you get a call, to the number you provide, to alert you if anyone is using your name to get a new credit card, take out a loan, or open any bank accounts or lines of credit.