When you compare the cost of various services, you begin to see how much your time is worth. For example, it would take most homeowners a significant chunk of nights and weekends to paint a house themselves, but a professional crew can get it done in a week, for a reasonable price.

Recovering from identity theft can take as little as an hour for some, or up to several hundred hours for others. For some, it takes a lifetime. The average identity theft victim loses anywhere from $2800.00 to $5100.00, which, coincidentally, happens to be roughly the cost of painting a house!

Nicole Piquero, one of the most distinguished female criminologists in the nation, according to The Journal of Criminal Justice Education, explains, “Identity theft, also known as ‘identity fraud,’ has affected between 5 and 25 percent of U.S. households. Because of our increasing reliance on technology, and given the resourcefulness of hard-to-catch identity thieves, it seems likely that most if not all of us will at some point be victims of this crime or know others that have been.”

Piquero and her spouse, Alex Piquero, who has made significant scholarly contributions to the field, conducted a study that “reveals that most individuals will agree to a small tax increase to support government-sponsored identity theft prevention efforts.”

Unfortunately, the government isn’t doing anything to protect you. Fortunately, McAfee Identity Protection includes proactive identity surveillance to monitor subscribers’ credit and personal information, as well as access to live fraud resolution agents.

For additional tips, visit CounterIdentityTheft.com.

Robert Siciliano is a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert. See him discuss identity theft on YouTube. (Disclosures)