Unless you have been living in a cave, you know that identity theft credit card fraud are on the rise. It’s too bad that the crooks aren’t as dumb as you would have thought, but they’re not. For that reason we can’t afford to let our guard down for even one minute.
In this article we will discuss some easy things you can do to help protect your identity. It’s really not that hard to avoid identity theft credit card fraud, much of the things that happen can be easily avoided if you just take some simple precautions and use some common sense.
Follow these tips and continue to be diligent and protect yourself:
1. Always shred any documents that have any personal information on it. Like I said above, most crooks aren’t dumb, they can actually be pretty clever. It’s hard to know just what they can use to steal your identity so it is a good idea to not let them get any of your information, even things that seem like they couldn’t do any harm.
Just buy a shredder and get in the habit of using it every day on every piece of paper you will be throwing in the trash.
2. Don’t carry your social security card or credit cards with you. If your wallet is lost or stolen you can really find yourself in a lot of trouble. And, you don’t need to carry every credit card with you and you sure don’t need your social security card. Keep them safe in a home safe (that is bolted to the floor preferably).
3. Keep track of all the expiration dates on your credit cards (and debit cards). Your financial institution will send out new cards before your old cards expire so if you don’t receive on in a timely manner it could mean that someone grabbed it out of your mailbox before you got it.
If you have cards that are getting ready to expire but you haven’t received the new ones yet call your financial institution and ask where they are. If they have sent it and you have had sufficient time to receive it but there is no sign of it, the bank may want to cancel the new card and reissue one and send it to you.
4. Never click on any link in an email and then enter personal information on the site that link takes you too. Believe it or not, it’s actually pretty easy and inexpensive for crooks to set up websites that look exactly like the website for your bank or credit card company.
Once they have those sites set up, all they have to do is send an email out and scare people to into clicking on a link in that email and going to the phony website and enter some personal information.
They will try to scare you by saying that there « is a problem » with your account or that your « account may have been compromised ». These are common scams, don’t fall for them.
If you ever get an email do not click on the link in the email, instead call your financial institution yourself and never call the number that is provided in the email, that too will be phony.
Instead look in the yellow pages for the number for your bank or credit card company or just check your bank statements and call the bank yourself to ask if there is a problem (I can almost guarantee you there isn’t).
These tips can help you stay safe from identity theft credit card fraud. It’s really not that easy to get ripped off, you have to be a willing participant in most cases… don’t be!