“What is shadyville.com and why is there a $1000 charge on my credit card?” It is both frightening and frustrating when you see charges on a credit card for purchases that you never made. Or — even worse — you receive a credit card bill for an account that you never opened yourself! It might not have happened to you yet, but it has probably happened to someone you know. Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information without permission to commit fraud or other crimes. Identity thieves spend countless hours hunting for bank accounts, social security numbers, passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data so that they can steal your identity and commit fraud.

Now — a new, free eBook by Todd Feinman entitled Scared Safe: Life’s Little Identity Theft Prevention Handbook is available for FREE download beginning today for anyone who wishes to arm themselves with a general understanding of the issues, and answers to questions they did not even know to ask. The handbook aims to educate consumers about basics that they need to know to avoid becoming victims of the dire and ever-growing threat of electronic identity theft!

The eBook is available at no cost from here.

According to the Federal Trade Commission — over 9 million Americans’ identities are stolen each year! Of all complaints received by the FTC in 2007, the category with the most complaints was identity theft-related — a hefty 32%! Over $100 billion in identity theft losses have been reported by consumers and businesses over the past two years alone! And, reported fraud losses in 2007 were almost double the amount reported in 2005!

The 52-page E-book covers a host of the most common identity theft threats and explains in easy-to-understand language what you can do to protect yourself. Identity theft expert Todd Feinman said he compiled the E-book “to give consumers an understanding of how to protect themselves based on the thousands of questions his company has received since they began selling their Identity Finder software. I’m delighted to be able to provide the public with one-stop access to valuable information that can potentially avert a lot of emotional and financial distress.”

Scared Safe chapters include “Peer-to-Peer File Sharing,” “Viruses and Worms,” “Spyware,” “Bots and Trojans,” “Phishing,” “Receipts,” “Retiring a Computer,” and more, each chapter illustrating — with screenshots for each so you can see just what these threats look like on your computer — the ‘Threat Information’ and ‘How to Protect Yourself’ from that particular threat. (i.e.-on page 28, a fake Ebay email example is shown, with an explanation of how you can tell it’s fake.) There’s even a screenshot of an actual illegal website displaying stolen bank account logins that hackers can purchase showing the amount of money in each account! (See page 5.)