Am I in danger of Identity Theft?

I photocopied a credit -card statement yesterday in the office, and left the original on my desk overnight. When I got in this morning, it wasn’t here. (We’ve had some problems with the cleaning staff over the last few years. You never want to leave money on your desk, but I didn;t consider my credit-card statement as money.) Anyway, I called up the credit card people to ask if I need to cancel my card, and was told that someone would need more information than appears on my monthly bill to run up charges, and I should monitor the account for a while on-line.

Afterwards, I remembered, however, that I’m always being cautioned to shred any stuff that has such info before throwing it out, and this was obviously swiped by someone intentionally, so maybe I should be concerned. Even if there’s no way for charges to be run up on the card (and I’m not convinced there is no way) what do you think I should do, other than keep checking the account action on-line.

Finally, why doesn’t the credit card company WANT me to cancel the account and apply for a new one? I would have thought that, since THEY’ll be on the hook if someone runs up a lot of charges (and i’m capped at 50 bucks, I think) THEY’D be eager to do what I was asking about, not me.

It wouldn’t hurt to cancel the card, in fact given your cleaning crew’s tendency, it would be well advised IMO. You can always get it replaced within a few days anyway.