So you’re at Wal-Mart one fine Binghamton evening, picking up some toilet paper and a 12 pack, and you’re short on cash. No problem — after all, isn’t that what mommy and daddy gave you that credit card for? You go to swipe your plastic currency, and lo and behold, the cashier tells you the account is maxed out. Impossible, you tell her. You haven’t used the card in over a week and haven’t charged anything more than a tank of gas. Then you call the card company and find out someone, we can only assume is named Bubba, has charged over $3,000 worth of camouflage jumpsuits and hunting rifles to your card at Gander Mountain.

Yes, that’s right, your identity has just been stolen. You are now one of those sad people on those commercials who open their mouths and have other people’s voices coming out, telling the world about all the cool shit you’ve just bought them. (Come on, everyone with a TV has seen those commercials. Get that confused look off of your face.) As a typical college student, you probably have the same “couldn’t happen to me” invincibility complex we also had … until this week, when one of our own found out her identity had been stolen.

And believe us, it makes the ordeal a lot harder to deal with if you can’t get over the shock that something bad could happen to you.

How many of us punch our credit card numbers into Web sites every day, not thinking anything of it? How secure do we really know these sites are, as we’re supplying the entire World Wide Web with our names and credit card numbers? We found out the answer this week — not very secure.

According to a 2005 report published by the Federal Trade Commission, 431,118 incidents of consumer fraud were reported last year, totaling about $600 million worth of stolen goods. And the most likely age group to be targets? Yup, you guessed it — we are. Victims in the 18- to 29-year-old age range came in first, totaling 29 percent of all victims.

Now, we do realize that no matter how careful you are, you still can’t completely protect yourself from this kind of theft … we’re not that naive. But you can lessen your chances of becoming a victim, and the first step in protecting yourself is realizing that you’re not immune to these kinds of things, no matter how much money your parents have, or how good your GPA is. It’s pretty simple kids: don’t give out information over the Web unless you’re sure a site is secure.

Yeah, we know college kids can do some pretty stupid things. Just check out the story on Page 1 about the Bearcat who got drunk and told a film crew he would let a mouse eat cheese off of his genitalia. But some things are worth exercising a little intelligence over, and protecting yourself from identity theft is one of them.

After all, just think how sorry you’ll be that you didn’t use better judgement when you’re paying for Bubba’s annual hunting trip with your Visa.