Has Your Identity Been Stolen?What to do if it happens to you.

An informative article in Slate by Daniel Engber details the steps that should be taken by the hundreds of thousands of people recently alerted that their personal information has been fraudulently obtained from ChoicePoint, Lexis/Nexis, Bank of America, UCB, etc., etc.

"What do you do if you find out your identity might have been stolen? Paperwork--lots of paperwork."

"Once your personal information has been stolen, there's no good way to get it back. You just hope the thief will move on to easier targets who haven't done the same paperwork you have."

If you think this is a lot of work to put on people who have done nothing wrong, while the organization that improperly released the information only has to (at most) send one notification letter... well, you're right, but being right isn't going to help.