Protecting your credit cards against fraud

5 September 2008

Credit cards can be susceptible to a wide range of fraud attempts if you are not careful. Luckily, it mostly just takes a bit of common sense and awareness of what is happening to your credit cards and their details in order to beat the fraudsters.

Physical protection of your credit cards

When using your credit cards to pay for things while out shopping or to take out money at an ATM, be sure to check for any fraud attempts. When handing over a card to be swiped, keep it in sight, as unscrupulous clerks can be in on credit card scams. Even at ATMs it is important to be watchful, as thieves can attach their own card skimming devices to the card insertion slots. If you ever see something unusual being done with your credit cards while shopping, ask for it back, and if an ATM looks suspicious, report it to the bank and find another ATM to use.

Protection of the details of your credit cards

When shopping online, be sure you are using a legitimate site. Phishing scams are where a fake website pretends to be a legitimate one in order to fool you into entering your details. Phishing sites can be difficult to detect, but often they will not have a correct URL. Always make sure that the URL of a site you are entering details into is the correct one, and try to establish shopping sites that you can become familiar with so that you are unlikely to be caught out by fraudsters.

Please browse our site to read about reward program credit cards, Visa credit cards, MasterCard credit cards and low interest credit cards. Also be sure to visit our comparison page if you would like to compare credit cards.

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