(MONEY Magazine) – Just because you're afraid of having your identity stolen doesn't mean you're paranoid. Last year 161,819 people notified the Federal Trade Commission that they'd been victims of identity theft--and the real numbers may be far higher. Now come the marketers, using your fear to sell you identity-theft protection. Frank Abagnale, the former con man who was the subject of Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, is now the spokesman for PrivacyGuard (www.privacyguard.com), which helps consumers monitor their credit reports for $89.99 a year. Major insurance companies, including AIG, Chubb and Travelers, sell identity-theft insurance to help cover the cost and hassle of getting your records straightened out. Then there are the credit-rating agencies; for $79.95 a year, for example, Experian will e-mail you whenever anyone runs a credit check on you. Or for that $79.95, plus shipping and handling, you can buy an ID-theft survival kit at www.identitytheft.org.

There are also "products" that are really scams. Some promoters have been selling identity-theft protection in order to get information about you and, yes, steal your identity. In February, for example, the FTC reached a settlement with two Arizona brothers who allegedly charged consumers' credit cards $289 for bogus protection against frauds like theirs.

Do you really need even the legitimate products? Probably not. Robert Hunter, insurance director at Consumers Union, says you should use insurance to cover potentially catastrophic financial losses, not the relatively minor expense and inconvenience of restoring your identity.

As for credit checkers, an annual check with the three credit agencies (maximum cost, $30) should alert you to anything funky. "If you order a copy of your report once a year, you would see any fraud before it got out of hand," says Privacy Rights Clearinghouse spokeswoman Jodi Beebe.

Other precautions: Cut up old credit cards before you throw them out, shred all documents that show your Social Security number--and don't buy "protection" from a telemarketer. For more tips, see the FTC's guidebook at www.consumer.gov/idtheft.

If you are defrauded, file a police report, notify the FTC (877-ID-THEFT) and put a fraud alert on your credit records. Contact Equifax (www.equifax.com; 800-525-6285), Experian (www.experian.com; 888-EXPERIAN) and TransUnion (www.transunion.com; 800-680-7289). --A.F.