Fraudsters are all over the place, and credit card fraud is on the rise, particularly at this time of year. Christmas always attracts the losers who can’t be bothered to work for their money; they’d much rather steal yours. This can mean directly stealing your wallet or bag and gaining access to your cards, or attacking you online and stealing you details and identity…
We were always told that we shouldn’t carry too much money. Now we are told we have to look out for our bags again because people are stealing debit and credit cards. Christmas can be a pretty miserable time if someone steals all the money from your bank account; well it can be a pretty miserable time if they steal money from anywhere really!
So here’s what you can do. Never carry your pin number around with you. You might think this is quite an obvious thing to say but it is amazing how many people carry credit cards in their wallets and purses and actually have the pin number right next to it because they couldn’t be bothered to change it or memorise it.
There is another one here, and that is never, never use anything as a pin number that may relate to anything else in your wallet. This includes dates of birth, house numbers and other cards etc. A fraudster might be a nasty piece of work, but he is not by any means an idiot, and even if he only gets three guesses, you do not want to make it easy for him do you?
This goes the same for online shopping. Never use passwords like this, especially if you have opted to store your card details with a particular website. Look after yourself and your credit cards!
Tags: credit cards, Fraud, online theft