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Protect Your Privacy When Job-hunting Online Identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain. The numbers associated with identity theft are beginning to add up fast these days. A recent General Accounting Office report estimates that as many as 750,000 Americans are victims of identity theft every year. And that number may be low, as many people choose not to report the crime even if they know they have been victimized. Identity theft is “an absolute epidemic,” states Robert Ellis Smith, a respected author and advocate of privacy. “It’s certainly picked up in the last four or five years. It’s worldwide. It affects everybody, and there’s very little you can do to prevent it and, worst of all, you can’t detect it until it’s probably too late.” Unlike your fingerprints, which are unique to you and cannot be given to someone else for their use, you personal data, especially your social security number, your bank account or credit card number, your telephone calling card number, and other valuable identifying data, can be used, if they fall into the wrong hands, to personally profit at your expense. In the United States and Canada, for example, many people have reported that unauthorized persons have taken funds out of their bank or financial accounts, or, in the worst cases, taken over their identities altogether, running up vast debts and committing crimes while using the victims’ names. In many cases, a victim’s losses may included not only out-of-pocket financial losses, but substantial additional financial costs associated with trying to restore his reputation in the community and correcting erroneous information for which the criminal is responsible. According to the FBI, identity theft is the number one fraud committed on the Internet. So how do job seekers protect themselves while co