Protect yourself from identity theft

This won't be music to your ears. Identity thieves have found another way to steal your personal information.

22News I-Team reporter Jaclyn Cashman shows you how online music sharing can put your identity at risk.

Peer-to-Peer networks where users share music is illegal and it could also cost you a lot more than a criminal record.

Fernando Ortiz of Springfield told 22News he downloads music illegally online.

But what he didn't realize is even though the music didn't cost him anything, that Peer-to-Peer file sharing could actually cost him everything, like his identity.

The CEO of LifeLock, Todd Davis, told 22News when you illegally download music you allow other users to see not just your songs, but personal information.

Todd Davis said, "We just recently did a search for tax returns and we were ale to bring up over 75,000 individual tax returns and that was just those on and connected to the internet."

And on your tax return is your social security number, the key that gives identity thieves all your private information.

If you do believe that your identity has been stolen the first thing consumer advocates tell you to do is put a fraud alert with one of the major credit report agencies.

The annual Federal Trade Commission report on identity theft found the number of complaints in the U.S. rose 20 percent from 2007 to 2008.

If you have an I-Team you want investigated email us at iteam@wwlp.com