In reading this thread it looks like there are a lot of people here who write way more checks than I do. I finally had to buy more checks for the first time in at least 10 years (my old checks had the address of my apartment that I moved out of just over 10 years ago.) At one check per month (rent) the current set will last me for pretty much the rest of my life. I pay all my bills online because it's easier, faster, cheaper (the checks I just bought cost about $.30 each. Online billpay is entirely free.). I use a seperate browser only for banking, and an email address that no one except my banks, credit cards and etrade have and I use a password vault so that I have different, random, long passwords for each account. Could I do more to protect myself from theft/identity theft? Sure. Am I terribly concerned that disaster is around the corner? No.

An idea that a coworker suggested is to keep a modest amount of money (maybe $500ish depending on one's lifestyle and spending habits) in a savings account at a different bank from where you store your wealth/checking account/etc. Use a debit card associated with the low balance account as your main plastic spending card. That way at the very worst a thief will have access to maybe $500. Yes that would suck if it were lost, but it wouldn't be life destroying. And it wouldn't wreak havoc on your life when you need to pay the mortgage and other bills.