Using only a credit card, fax machine, and a fast Net connection, you can dig up a mine of information about almost anybody. The result? At virtually no cost, with a few forged signatures, and a few hours' digging, you can get enough information to make a persons' life hell -- if you were a con artist or a vengeful boyfriend.

How do you go about getting the information? Start with just the person's name and the city of residence. You can probably get the phone number and address free. Yahoo's white pages is a good starting point. Type in your target's name. Chances are that the search will reveal many names and most will have a phonenumber and address. Yahoo's white pages turned out to be the most accurate of all the Internet-based address books, such as Bigfoot, 4-11, Who Where, etc. This is because most of them update information once a year. InfoSpace is also reasonably accurate but nowhere as good as Yahoo.

You will need to try various searches before you get an address and phone number that's accurate. Others you can try are AOL's NetFind, which culls listings from Switchboard. Switchboard offers free e-mail and home pages and users to enter their address and phone number during registration. If ever your target has used one of these services, you can find him or her in this way.

Still, it's not easy to find someone mainly because there is no similar database of names in India. Many people have common last names, making it almost impossible to identify them from a list of results. Internet searches are quirky -- they deliver wrong information on some people and almost the entire bio-data on others.There seems to be little consistency. Therefore, the need to be careful and use more than one search. Most ask for the full name, some for e-mail addresses and still others, for the address. Usually, the full name is enough for a proper search.

If your target is a regular Net user, he or she will have a few e-mail accounts. All e-mail account providers have a member search -- become a member and search the directory. If you're a member already, so much the better. All directories like Yahoo! and NetFind let you search for e-mail addresses, with NetFind being the better.

The next step is to search for the full name. Move to a search engine like HotBot and search exact phrases, that is, the person's name. Chances are the person will show up either in a newspaper article or on a site, with more details like where he or she went to college and how he or she began working.

To know your target's political affiliations and leanings, try a news group. Head over to DejaNews powerSearch and enter the name. If ever the person has participated in, or posted, an article on a news group, he will be there. The tone of the article will give you an insight into his personal views and leanings.

Slowly, a portrait begins to emerge. Credit card transactions are monitored by three US-based credit reporting bureaus: Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. These agencies will not, however, offer your target's credit report without a signed letter of consent. But you can fake the letters as they seldom bother to cross-check the signatures. With such a letter, you can get a complete credit history and also the entire number for each credit card. A criminal can easily misuse the information for credit card frauds -- imagine the lovely goodies you can order off the Net now!

Several articles also claim to be able to get your bank account numbers and balances! But for a price (around Rs 8,000) and a good reason. Online investigation services can tell you about a person's criminal record, driving/accident records, vehicle, aircraft and boat ownership records, bankruptcy records and location of birth, parents/ adopted children.

Is there a way to protect yourself from this kind of violation? If you live, work, or spend money in today's information society, there's no way you can be 100 per cent safe from identity theft. But there are some steps you can take to reduce your risk.

Here's how: Remove yourself from online databases. Most such databases that provide addresses and phone numbers get their material from one directory server. Getting your name out of those lists is the best way of hiding your Net presence. Search for your full name at each site; if your address, phone number or other information turns up, send an e-mail to fill out a form at the URL listed below. Be sure to provide your full name and address; ironically, most of these companies require it before they'll remove it.

Credit companies sell your address to direct marketers. Remember junk mail? Although Equifax does not selladdresses, it does make them available to companies so that they can offer you ``pre-approved'' loans and credit cards. There's no demonstrated relationship between this practice and crimes of identity theft, but the more the people who have your address, the more likely that it will fall into the wrong hands. Write to credit card bureaus to get yourself removed from these direct marketing lists. And finally, keep a low digital profile.