Bankrate, a consumer financial services company, recently released the results of their survey regarding money matters and identity theft. Despite largely publicized data breaches over the past couple years, Americans are less fearful of identity theft, according to the survey.

More than half of the individuals polled (54 percent) worry about identity theft, as compared to 80 percent in Bankrate’s 2008 survey. Only 19 percent said they had little or no fear of theft in 2008, whereas 43 percent expressed little to no fear in this year’s survey. The threat still exists, with 46 percent of respondents claiming to know someone affected, up from 34 percent in 2008.

Take steps to protect yourself from identity theft: don’t respond to suspicious emails or phone calls asking for account numbers or financial data, consider signing up for a fraud-monitoring service and use strong passwords with a variety of characters, numbers, upper and lowercase letters. Americans report following safe practices including shredding documents with sensitive information, filing a credit report, avoiding unsecure WiFi while banking and applying a credit freeze if theft is expected.

Princeton Survey Research Associates International conducted the survey.