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Credit Card Identity Theft: Not So Impossible

Credit card identity theft is the most common way for someone to attack your personal and financial security. Without good information about this crime, anyone could make an easy target for a criminal to exploit and rob. Credit card security is actually a fairly simple set of guidelines that you can follow to lessen the likelihood of your card number being used without authorization.

It all starts with your every day activities, and more specifically, your everyday online activities. With the emergence of online shopping, banking, bill paying, and stock market surfing we have made our personal credit card information even more accessible to thieves. Some sites do provide a certain amount of built-in security to help prevent credit card identity theft. Sometimes their efforts just aren’t enough, and this is where you take the next steps to protecting your information and yourself from credit card identity theft.

Keep Your Personal Information Private

Your first action should be to make a list of all your credits cards, their numbers, fraud emergency numbers listed on the back, and keep this list in a safe place in your home. This will enable you to respond quickly if and when the theft is realized. The next step would be to restrict your credit card purchases online to vendors and companies that you know and trust. If it looks like a small, or family owned business, perhaps consider sending a money order for your purchase of the goods. The final step to take in protecting yourself from credit card identity theft is smart password management. Most people, to make things easier, have the same password for all of their online activities. This is a dangerous practice that leaves you wide open to credit card identity theft.

With only a few major email companies in the market and a few more major banks that people bank with, your password should be your first and most powerful protection against credit card identity theft. Keep a note pad, or piece of paper near your computer, and list your passwords to all of your online financial and personal information web logins. Just imagine if your house key unlocked your car, which could open a vault with all your money in it. If someone takes your one key, you just lost your car, your personal property, and your money in one crime. Protect yourself from credit card identity theft. Move away from the mentality that “it will never happen to me”, and adopt a new thought process, “I’d like to see them try”.