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So, I thought I was being somewhat cautious. I have 4 credit cards, a Chase Freedom I use solely for local purchases, a Chase Amazon I use for online purchases and online bill payments and a Chase IHG Rewards I use for traveling and an Amex. My IHG card has gotten hacked a couple of times, always after a trip, and today they hacked my Amazon card. I do a lot of online shopping so I guess I need to change my strategy.
So what do I do? Change all my online bill pays back to manual bills paid by check? Use a prepaid card for those odd purchases online? Only pay cash at restaurants (the only time the cards leave my sight)?
It's very frustrating - what do you do to keep your cards safe?
If you don't have chipped cards, request them immediately. Chip technology reduced card hacking by 75-80%. Not a perfect solution, but much better than we've had.
If you don't have chipped cards, request them immediately. Chip technology reduced card hacking by 75-80%. Not a perfect solution, but much better than we've had.
Not from my reading. Chip cards dont protect you with online shopping.
Not so big a deal from my personal experience. I've had a few fraudulent charge attempts (3 or 4 over last decade?) and the card is cancelled and a new one shows up a few days later. I do keep another backup account so I always have one card working. I don't like to have too many cards.
Never been out of pocket for any $. The biggest hassle is remembering to update any autopay accounts to the new card #.
1) Clean up your computer or use a device (tablet, smartphone, computer, etc) for dedicated financial information.
2) Check the card terminals for skimming devices (mostly popular at gas stations or ATMs).
3) Be careful to use secured websites when using your financial information. Generally "Https" is more secure than "Http."
4) Understand that most data breaches are out of your control. Sometimes it's a malicious retail employee who copies your credit card for internet purchases or clones the card, sometimes it's a cyber attack, and often times it's financial data collection that goes "missing" in transit. There have been several of the latter from Fed-Ex/UPS/DHL in the last 5 years.
As for me, I categorize my cards by rewards type and got through each month statement for our monthly budget. I do not allow errant charges get past me.
True since you have to provide card info to the seller and they store it on their system and may have inadequate security measures in place. I would say with online ALWAYS use a credit card and not a debit card. That way you can dispute the charges more easily and they'll suspend the charges so you don't have to pay them while under dispute. With a debit card you have to wait until the dispute is settled before getting your money back.
Thanks for the replies. I've had my CC's hacked before but this time, they somehow got my email address and purchased things online - for which I received an email receipt! That helped me catch it pronto. I changed my email password and cancelled the card within an hour of their transactions. The card did have a chip BTW.
Funny thing is, they bought a Target gift card online and then they changed their email address to mine and Target sent me an email showing their name and old email address. Now I'm wondering if it's not somebody from my ISP since I use that card to pay that bill.
Use one credit card for online bills and never let it leave your hand if out shopping, use a second card for anything online and for places where the card leaves your hand, such as restaurants, the card I use at restaurants recently got copied but in all my years the card that never leaves my hand and has autopays on it has never gotten compromised, yet times are changing, it might be best to use a different card that gives one time numbers for online purchases or use paypal for those and have the paypal account hooked to a credit card, not your checking account.
I also agree that you need to clean your computer or use a different computer for online purchases and never save your passwords to your computer.
True since you have to provide card info to the seller and they store it on their system and may have inadequate security measures in place. I would say with online ALWAYS use a credit card and not a debit card. That way you can dispute the charges more easily and they'll suspend the charges so you don't have to pay them while under dispute. With a debit card you have to wait until the dispute is settled before getting your money back.
That's one of the reasons I stick with Chase. Every time my card has been compromised, they automatically reverse the charges -I've never been out any money. They also call me or alert me with any suspicious activity. Just wished I didn't have to do it so often!
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