If you dont want to pay for the services such as bank of america here are a couple of things you can do to reduce your chances of your identity being stolen\n\n1. shred all your mail\n\n2. By law, you can request 1 copy of your credit history every year from each of the three credit history companies at  www.annualcreditreport.com\n    I suggest you stagger your requests to each of them i.e. request experian first then 4 months later request another report from transunion, and another 4 months later from equifax. this way you get a free report every 4 months. \n\n3. dispute anything that is wrong (most common: credit cards forget to tell the credit history guys that you closed your account or paid all your loans in full)\n\n4. when online, try to use virtual credit numbers to make the purchases. this facility is available for citicard customers, and maybe amex. the virtual numbers are good only for 1 use, and useless after that. so if someone steals that, it is useless.\n\n5. when buying something offline, save your receipts, and make sure your statement is accurate. (a favourite scam is to charge maybe 50cents on a statement, that way you dont notice it, but a scammer who charges 10,000 card owners 50cents a month can make $5000 a month no sweat -- and you dont even realize it)\n\n6. also dont forget to shread any credit card solicitations you dont plan to use.
How do I protect myself from credit card scam?