Credit Card Frauds – What You Should Do to Avoid It?

Every year, hundreds of million of dollars are stolen by thieves engaged in credit card fraud. Good and services can be charged all around the world with the use of the Internet, making these thieves harder to find. Criminals ranging from petty thieves to organized crime syndicates are involved in the lucrative trade of stolen credit card numbers.

Credit card seems to be a modern necessity in a society not bothered by debt and encouraged to, “spend, spend, spend”. The credit card industry has convinced a lot of people that it’s OK to buy now and pay later. Since cards are frequently used in place of cash or check to speed up transactions, the amount of credit card transactions a day is staggering.

With this much business going on with credit cards, thieves have a variety of ways they can steal your card number and ring up charges in your name. Credit cards are merely pieces of plastic with information encoded on a magnetic strip. An entire illegal industry has evolved around being able to get that information.

Waiters, cashiers or any other person who handles your card can easily swipe it through a device that fits in the palm of their hand, which is capable of recording the information encoded on the card. These people then sell large amounts of the data to others who use them to purchase goods throughout the world.

The growing epidemic of identity theft also involves credit card fraud. Identity thieves will go through mail or even trash to find credit card information or credit cards never activated. If you’re anything like me, 60% of my mail seems to be unsolicited credit card applications. If a person had the right details about me they would be able to apply for as many cards as they could, ring up charges under my name, and disappear before I knew what hit me.

All of this information has to be stored somewhere. Just like for every lock there is someone who can pick it, for every data security system there is a hacker who dreams to find his way around it. There have been many high profile losses of “data integrity” from government and business sources that could help criminals commit credit card fraud.

Credit card fraud doesn’t need to be high tech necessarily. By simply leaving your wallet or purse in plain sight in your car calls out to a thief to smash the window and run off with your cards. By buying things over the phone, especially if you did not initiate the transaction, you also risk losing your credit card information. Criminals have set up entire call centers with the aim of bilking credit card numbers from unsuspecting victims.

While credit card fraud can be nasty, here is how you protect yourself:

1. Keep an eye on your card at all times: Try to limit the time it is out of your sight and make sure you don’t leave it anywhere.
2. Never give your information out to someone over the phone, unless you have initiated the call and know with whom you are dealing. Reputable companies will not call you out of the blue and ask for your number.
3. Check your bill frequently: Make sure you check charges to your bill as often as possible. If you share an account with someone, make sure they confirm which charges are their’s.
4. Sign your new cards immediately.
5. Shred old cards, statements, and credit card applications.
6. Keep your account numbers, expiration dates and phone numbers for the companies in safe and secure place in case you lose your cards.
7. Call your credit card company immediately if you have lost your card.

Luckily for consumers, U.S. law limits liability to $50 if your card is stolen and used by someone else. This protection, along with the fact that most merchants require identification and even the additional security code on the back of cards, has helped protect consumers even more.

Credit card fraud is big business and thieves will stop at nothing to get to your information. Do yourself a favor and protect yourself by following the above steps.