Protecting Your Debit & Credit Card Info

More Proactive Productivity

Save yourself the time that will be wasted if your cards are compromised. In a related post, 10 Tips for Proactively Protecting Personal Info, I shared that one facet of productivity is being proactive. In that post there were tips on protecting yourself from identity theft. With Christmas less than 90 days away, you will probably be using your debit and credit cards more than any other time of year.

The more you use them the more opportunity cyber-criminals have to steal your credit and debit card information. Cyber-criminals are lurking at retail stores, online and at restaurants just waiting to steal your information. They could be having a party with your money and you might not know about it for several days.

9 Tips for Protecting Your Cards

While using cash might be the best way to protect your debit and credit cards, it is not always the most convenient. If you cannot use cash, protect your cards by following these suggestions:

Never leave your card laying so anyone can see the card number. Some people actually get card numbers by walking by tables in restaurants and taking pictures of cards with their phones.
Check your statements, make sure your receipts match your transactions.
Always run your gas pump transactions as credit – never as debit. Cyber-criminals have ways of reading the pin numbers when you use your card as a debit.
Watch who is watching you – cover the keypad anytime you use your pin.
Contact your card company before you take a trip, let them know where you are going and when.
On the back of your debit and credit cards write “photo ID required” in place of the signature.
Make a copy of everything in your wallet including credit card numbers and contact numbers for the issuers. Store the copies in a secure location. If your wallet is lost or stolen all the information you need to cancel your cards will be in one secure place.
If a family member passes away immediately contact the credit reporting agencies and request a deceased alert. This places an alert on the deceased’s credit report telling companies that the person has died and cannot be issued credit.
If you let your children use your cards, teach them how and why they need to follow these same precautions.

These are just a few suggestions. Cyber-criminals are crafty and they have lots of ways to steal from you. Use caution, be protective and be aware. It can be a bit inconvenient to take these precautions, but it’s much better than the inconvenience of dealing with a nasty “gift” from a cyber-criminal.

Please add your own tips in the comments so we can all be proactively protected!

Blessings,

Lauree

…keep dancing the dream

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