7. Come up with an uncrackable password
HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? Identity thieves can use published lists of the most common passwords (like the one at www.geodsoft.com) to break through weak protections and have free reign over your credit cards, bank account, or utilities.

WHAT CAN I DO? Jacquet says never use birthdays, your name, or the names of those closest to you as passwords. Pet names are also easy for a thief to figure out. Come up, instead, with a jumble of at least eight characters — and try to include numbers. Jacquet says a good way to remember a meaningless password is to select an opening line to a song — and not one from a genre you’re known to like. For example, the first line from the song “Oh What A Beautiful Morning,” from the musical Oklahoma! goes like this: “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow.” The password would then be tabghotm. Also, don’t use the same password for different things, and change them every three months.

8. Keep your sex tape off the Internet
HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? How can’t they? Just follow the sordid bread-crumb trail of defrocked Hollywood stars — Pamela Anderson has two sex tapes online, Colin Farrell is fighting to keep his off the Web, J. Lo just sued Suge Knight because she thought he had plans for one of hers, you can Ask Jeeves about Scott Stapp and Kid Rock’s romp with four skanks, and, of course, the Gone With the Wind of classic sex tapes is still mightily downloadable — Paris Hilton’s “One Night In Paris.” Romance ebbs and flows, but the Web is forever.

WHAT CAN I DO? Try suing the Web distributor for breach of privacy to halt distribution of the tape. In March, a Hollywood judge temporarily upheld Colin Farrell’s stay of ejaculation. But though this keeps Farrell’s ex from marketing the tape online for the moment, it does nothing to get the lawsuit squashed for good. Pam Anderson and her ex, Bret Michaels, won their case against a company that intended to distribute a video of their love-making, but eventually had to return to court because the video showed up online anyway. If you don’t want to bother with all of that legal in and out, you can just take it as it comes. In 2004, Paris Hilton reportedly dropped her lawsuit against her tape-pimping ex in exchange for $400,000 and a share of future sales of “One Night,” much of which, she says, will go to charity.

9. Avoid insidious tracking devices
HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? In 1999, a new mini-tracking device called the radio frequency identification technology chip (RFID) inserted its way into the American consumer market. RFID chips are about the size a grain of sand, can be read by receivers tens of feet away, and are used in E-Z pass transponders, card-keys, and, if implanted inside a human, can store vital records or credit card numbers. In 2005, Wal-Mart began requiring its largest suppliers attach RFID tags to their warehouse crates. The tags are then used to track products from supplier to warehouse more efficiently. But according to Katherine Albrecht, co-founder of spychips.com and co-author of the 2005 book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID, these largely unregulated devices could also track people. Albrecht says RFID in clothing, shoes, and any other consumer product would mean RFID readers placed strategically “can ID people as they move around” by attaching objects to the credit card number used to purchase them and, consequently, the person who has registered the credit card. IBM has even created an RFID reader with a pending patent titled “Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items.” Besides Wal-Mart, Albrecht says Target, CVS, Best Buy, Levi Strauss, Gillette and dozens of other companies have tested RFID or are actively engaged in their development. So far, most stores and product makers claim not to use the chips, mostly because consumers have freaked out about their people-tracking potential.

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WHAT CAN I DO? RFID tags work by transmitting information to a remote site via radio waves through a tiny antenna. In March 2006, the New York Times reported that a group of European computer scientists found the chips are vulnerable to hackers. According to spychips.com, surface RFID antennas are fairly easy to spot — the antenna ranges in size from just under an inch to the size of an 8.5-x-11-inch sheet of paper, and it looks like a mini-metallic labyrinth. In shoes, try looking under the inner pad. Some chips are embedded in the product, and those you’ll need an X-ray to find. If you find the RFID, spychips.com says you can disable it by cutting out the chip and running it through with a needle or crushing it (the chip is the tiny black spot where all of the antenna lines connect). Or you can stop shopping at the stores listed on spychips.com which have shown support for RFID.

10. Fly under the boss’s radar
HOW CAN THEY SCREW ME? According to federal law, your boss can record you, read your e-mail, even monitor you with a grid of 20 compact mirrors suspended from the ceiling if she wants to. You are working in her domain. Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Privacy Journal in Providence, Rhode Island, says that, on top of this, the federal government has easier access under the USA PATRIOT Act to whatever information your boss holds about you and, like your library records, no one can alert you that your files have been investigated.

WHAT CAN I DO? At the very least, Smith says, ask your employer not to use your entire Social Security number to identify you in the company database. This won’t save you from the feds, but it might cover your ass if the database is hacked. Also, keep in mind that anything you do (or write on e-mail) could be monitored by your boss. So play nice. But, remember - bosses can watch you, but they can’t use their power for overly-nefarious purposes. If a video monitor has lingered on your naughty bits, you can sue. As for the feds’ trolling, working to rein in the Bush administration’s lax snooping laws is about all you can do to stop it.

If you can figure out where Sara Donnelly can be reached, go ahead and e-mail her. Then let the rest of us know at portland-feedback@thephoenix.com .