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Credit card theft is a problem for everyone
Credit card theft can be avoided
A few simple tips can help you avoid being a victim of credit card theft. The last thing you want is to have some unknown person running around spending money in your name.
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You can avoid being victimized by taking a few simple precautions
The explosion of commerce on the Internet has led to an equal explosion of credit card theft. It’s just so easy to spend money anonymously if you spend it online, and thieves know this and are exploiting it. Here are a few more examples of how you can avoid having your vital personal information stolen by thieves.
- Secure? Make sure when you are conducting business on the Web that the site you are visiting is secure. Not the whole site, but at least the page where you enter your personal information. Most browsers display a padlock on the bottom toolbar to display a secure site and the URL of the page should begin with HTTPS rather than HTTP. Secure is good.
- When doing business in person, make sure that you remember to take your card and that you remember to take your receipt. Most receipts contain your card number and expiration date, so you don’t want to leave them behind. Anyone with both pieces of information can use them to make purchases online.
- Don’t carry more cards than you need. The average American household owns 19 cards, but you’ll rarely need them all when you’re out on a shopping trip. Take the ones you need and leave the others at home.
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- Read your statements carefully. Compare them to what you know you purchased and call your credit card company immediately if you see anything you don’t recognize. And watch out for statements that simply don’t show up. It’s not hard to simply call a card company and have the statements sent to a new address, and thieves frequently do just that. If your statement doesn’t arrive, you won’t be able to look at it to see what’s wrong with it. Expect it in the mail and if it doesn’t come, give your card issuer a call.
- Shred your financial information when you’re done with it. That includes receipts that you don’t need to keep for tax purposes and those annoying “convenience” checks that often come with your credit card bill. Shredders are cheap; buy one and get rid of anything that a thief could use to steal from you.
- Mail your bill from a Post Office. Some people roam through neighborhoods and steal mail from people’s mailboxes. If someone steals your bill, they have your account number. If they steal your payment, they also have your checking account number. And nothing good can come from that. You could not only have your card number stolen, but you could find yourself a victim of identity theft, too.
These are but a few of the many things you can do to avoid being a victim of having your financial information stolen. They don’t take much time to implement, but they’ll cost you a lot if you don’t heed them.
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