WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- When Gina Titus became a victim of identity theft after her wallet was stolen, she expected to have her credit cards used for some unauthorized purchases. What she didn't expect was to get hit with a maternity bill.

"They used the checking account and credit cards before I could cancel them," said Ms. Titus, a 28-year-old public relations account executive from San Francisco. "Then several months later I get a letter from a collection agency and found they had opened a checking account in my name. I had a Discover card I never opened. The extent of what they were able to do was astounding."

The biggest surprise came when Ms. Titus started getting maternity bills for the baby born to a woman who was using her identity.

"I'm definitely more vigilant now," said Ms. Titus, who eventually was able to reclaim her financial life after spending hours on the phone with creditors.

The physical manner in which Ms. Titus had her identity stolen nine years ago -- her wallet was stolen from a car that was broken into -- did not involve the sophisticated techniques used by identity thieves who turn to cyberspace.

And while identity theft can involve the Internet and computers, more often than not it involves physical methods such as a stolen or lost wallet, a burglarized mailbox or someone you know ripping you off.

Many people worry that using a credit card for an online purchase can lead to identity theft. But it's a stolen or lost wallet that provides a far more likely scenario for that happening, according to a survey by Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin Strategy & Research, a consulting firm for the financial services and payments industries.

Javelin has set up a Web site, www.idsafety.net, that includes an ID safety quiz, consumer tips to prevent identity theft, and a consumer version of the 2008 identity theft survey.

Among other things, the 2008 survey looked at how identity theft is accomplished. Of the one out of three identity theft victims who knows how the information was taken, more than three-fourths said it involved a physical method such as a stolen wallet, a phone or mail-order sale, stolen mail or a theft by someone they knew, compared with 14 percent who reported that it involved online access.

James Van Dyke, Javelin's president and founder, said: "I think it is to the detriment of consumers to focus exclusively on these electronic methods of communication. Criminals don't have a [bias] toward technology. They will use any channel that works."

That's why consumers need to take steps to prevent identity theft, whether by not mailing paper checks in the offline world or by making sure your computer's anti-virus software is current in the online world, he said. It's also crucial that consumers monitor their financial account activity to determine if they have become victims of identity theft.

The annual survey continues a five-year trend that shows identity theft dropping in the United States as more online security procedures are put in place and consumers take more preventive measures. Last year, there were an estimated 8.1 million identity theft cases, or 3.58 percent of adults, resulting in $45 billion in fraud, compared with 8.4 million cases, or 3.84 percent of adults, resulting in $51 billion in fraud the previous year.

But it's not all good news for consumers. Fewer people who were victims of identity theft could say how their information was stolen: 35 percent in the 2008 survey compared with 42 percent in 2007.

For more information about identity theft go to www.ftc.gov or call the Commission's ID Theft hot line at 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338) or TTY: 1-866-653-4261.