NEW YORK (Money Magazine) - Earlier this fall, on the heels of the Federal Trade Commission's announcement that identity theft has reached "epidemic proportions," affecting 10 million Americans a year, I called Beth Givens, founder of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the country's leading expert on the topic, to ask her what individuals could do to stave off the onslaught.

But Givens was all gloom and doom. While we could take some oft-advised measures to reduce our chances of being victimized -- shredding credit-card solicitations, signing up for do-not-call lists and removing Social Security cards from our wallets -- she was out of new ideas. She is convinced that identity theft won't be tamed until creditors start evaluating credit applications more carefully. (And that would definitely help.)

Then I got a more optimistic take from an unexpected source: James Van Dyke, an analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, which advises financial services companies on technology issues. Van Dyke and a colleague have come up with a new way to reduce your chances of being the next victim on your block: Bank and pay your bills online.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. The common wisdom is that electronic commerce makes you easy pickings for an identity thief. In fact, that's a misconception. It's true that once an identity has been swiped -- say, someone else has taken out a credit card in your name -- the Internet is a particularly easy place to use that card. There's no eagle-eyed clerk to point out that the burly guy trying to purchase those tickets to Bimini couldn't possibly be Caroline Jones. But the original theft still tends to be a low-tech crime.

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According to the FTC, about half the country's victims know how their information was swiped, and in many cases the breach was paper -- bills, bank statements and credit-card solicitations pilfered from garbage cans and, more brazenly, mailboxes.

It's no coincidence that the U.S. Postal Service has posted a notice on its Web site advising that "because identity theft almost always involves the U.S. mail...Don't leave mail in your mailbox overnight or on weekends."

It's for this reason that Van Dyke's recommendation starts to make sense. It's a protective measure. If you bank and pay your bills online -- and are careful to do so with an institution that will then stop the flow of mail -- the paper trail starts to dry up.

Banking online also helps in detecting the crime. You're most likely to discover identity theft when you open a bill or statement and see a slew of transactions that aren't yours. But paper statements come only once a month (and take time to get to you), so those transactions could easily be 35 days old.

Consumers who bank and pay bills online check their bank accounts much more frequently -- nearly four times a month on average, according to Javelin. Early detection could dramatically slash the losses due to identity theft. Says Van Dyke, "Once you spot it, the crime spree ends very quickly."

That could mean a big cut in the $47 billion cost of identity theft in this country each year. Most of that cost is borne by institutions, but some of it trickles down to individual victims as well. According to FTC data, when a thief uses one of your existing accounts, your average real cost is $160. When the thief takes out a new account in your name, the tab is $1,180. To me, this just adds to the growing list of reasons to bank online.

Still not convinced? A Wells Fargo report says if we all viewed and paid our bills online, we'd save 18.5 million trees a year (enough to build 216,000 single-family homes), plus 29 trillion BTUs (enough to power Jacksonville for a year).

Another study showed that going electronic could cut the time the average household spends paying bills from two hours a month to 15 minutes. And since I could use that hour and 45 minutes to go to the gym (or sleep), that's reason enough for me to go online.

Editor-at-large Jean Chatzky appears regularly on NBC's Today. Contact her by e-mail at moneytalk@moneymail.com.