Identity theft, what can be done to prevent it?

The Associated Press just reported on November 28th 2007 the results of a survey done by the Federal Trade Commission, the results the FTC came up with stated that the occurrence of ID theft was down 16 percent, from an anticipated 9.9 million victims to 8.3 for people over the age of 18, of course a few consumer advocacy groups disputed their findings stating that it was difficult to get a precise handle on the number of victims due to a number of factors one of them is that people don't often know what exactly is in their credit report.
one of the reasons given for the FTC survey understating the actual numbers, was that the conclusion is not statistically significant since it was a phone survey where a small sample was used, another reason was that a separate survey was done by the Gartner Group using the same research firm McLean VA. based Synovate. The difference was in the fact that Gartner's survey used a web based data collection method that does not account for non web users so it's results should be statistically be lower.
The Gartner survey showed that the number of victims of Identity Theft actually rose from 10 million to 15 million people in 2006.
Furthermore the people most likely to be contacted first, Banks, and Mortgage companies are not required to report these losses nor are they likely to call attention to their own fraud problems, and most victims won't bother contacting the Government because they won't get the victims money back or correct credit problems.
The bottom line is that Identity Fraud cost consumers at least 1.2 Billion dollars directly, and businesses 55.7 Billion in annual losses, the cost to businesses gets past on to consumers in the form of higher rates and fees. The end result is the same, ID theft costs you regardless if you are an Identity Theft Victim, or a person borrowing money.