"You should shred those," a friend advised me as I disposed of a pile of receipts after checking my bank statements.

It was not enough, she stressed, simply to rip them up, as I was doing, and throw them in the bin.

They had to be virtually obliterated to prevent someone piecing them back together and stealing my identity. She then told me how she had once hired a car and someone had copied her credit card details, then withdrawn money from her account. Now she tries to use cash for virtually everything, which sometimes makes life very difficult.

Identity theft is obviously a frightening experience, but if every scrap of advice is followed, we would never leave our homes. People hanging round cashpoints waiting to pounce on your receipt, others raiding your dustbin in the middle of the night. I don't envy anyone who picks on our wheelie bin, which is usually full to bursting with soggy left-overs and cat food containers.

It seems that even the most mundane personal details can be put to use. I heard on the radio this week of a man whose identity was stolen using a discarded luggage ticket bearing not much more than his name.

That's why I heaved a sigh of relief when my key ring broke. It was given to me by my daughters, bearing my name, along with its meaning: beautiful, intelligent, generous, talented - and lots of other extremely fitting descriptions. My heart sank when I saw it, being the sort of naff' thing I would never buy. But because it was a gift from my children I bit the bullet and put my house keys on it.

Then, one night, on a TV crime documentary, came a warning: Never attach any identification to any set of keys.' Although I did think that it would take a super-incredible king of espionage to trace me from my first name, the seeds of doubt were sown. What if I dropped them and someone lurking nearby picked them up, then came over pretending to know me? You can't be too careful in 21st century Britain, that's why I wasn't too upset to say goodbye to my key fob.

Nowadays people want to remain anonymous. ID theft is probably to blame for the demise of Tracy-Wayne stickers on car windscreens, and you don't see many bling-style identity bracelets anymore.

Although Tony Blair seems a bit lax on guarding his particulars - he's perfectly comfortable being pictured in the national Press drinking from a mug with his name on it. I suppose his get-out clause is that everyone knows him anyway, so he has nothing to lose.

My husband owns a pair socks with his name on them - also bought by the children. By way of experiment I may discard one in the street and wait to see how long it takes for the FBI to call and ask him why he's paying for weapons grade plutonium to be shipped to Third World countries. Although in reality that's unlikely, as his current account could just about cover the cost of a bottle of low-grade meths.

Unlike adults kids are encouraged to parade their name with pride. Its big business - mugs, pencils, pens, towels, bathrobes - you name it, it can be personalised.

But for how long? The way things are going parents will soon be forbidden to sew names on to school uniforms and children will have to shred old bus passes.