Tips For Avoiding Credit Card Fraud

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

Credit card fraud is a rising problem in the world today. Did you know that people will actually call and scam you by saying you ?won? a trip and all you need to do is give them a credit card number to reserve your spot or that people will go through your garbage to get bills or a credit card receipt with your credit card number. With all of the chances to steal your identity you need to make sure that you do all that you can to protect yourself, your identity and credit. Here are a few tips that might help you.

A couple of ideas that you SHOULD DO to protect your identity

1. Always sign the backs of your credit cards immediately upon receiving them.
2. Destroy carbon copies once you receive them.
3. Put all of your credit cards in a separate place other than your wallet, maybe a zipper in your purse or a money clip in your pocket. That way if your wallet gets stolen, the person will not have access to all of your credit card information.
4. Keep your receipts for a comparison with your credit card statement. If something is not correct, you should contact the issuer immediately.
5. Rip up or shred all receipts that would have any personal information on them.

A few things that you SHOULD NOT DO in order to help protect your identity.

1. Do not give out any personal information to anybody; this is including credit card information, social security numbers, passwords or any sort of account number.
2. Do not lend your credit card to any person.
3. Do not keep any of your account numbers, credit cards or any types of receipts lying around anywhere.
4. Never give personal information out over the phone, most of these phone calls are scam's and will just use the information that you give them.
5. Do not take your eyes off of a person running your credit card information, there have been cases where cashiers have secretly printed out doubles of a persons information and kept a copy for themselves.

One of the most important things that you can do is to protect your identity. If your identity gets stolen, your entire life could be turned upside down. This could hurt your chances of getting anything you want in the future, as far as your credit goes. Following these tips of things you should do and things you should not do will help you dramatically in protecting yourself and your assets in life.