Last night I finally purchased my Macbook Pro and boy what a beautiful piece of machinery it is. I purchased it with my Credit Card and on my drive home, I received a phone call from my card company asking me if the purchase that I made was fraudulent. I was quite surprised at the fact that the company did such a thing. It’s nice to know that the credit card company would provide such an important service. Here are a few tips on how to prevent identity theft.
The big three credit reporting agencies will put a free 6 month credit monitoring service. The service will notify you wither by email or telephone call in the event of someone making an unusual purchase. Transunion, Experian, and Equifax all have separate lists and they will all give you a free credit report annually to boot.
Always hand your credit card with your ID so that they check the identification and make sure that it’s you. Most employees of stores don’t even check to see your ID. I don’t know if it is technically legal for you to sign the back of your card ‘SEE ID’. But at least 90% of mechants won’t even check to see what you signed on the back. So lets not compound this problem and show them your ID.
Check your credit card statements every month. Read through the charges in detail. You’d be surprised at how many restaurants try to charge the wrong amount on your card to get a few extra dollars for a tip. This has happened a couple of times to me and I got the entire charge taken off as an inconvenience caused by the merchant. Boo ya.
Don’t Lose your wallet or purse. If you do, call the credit card company and put a stop on it immediately or else it will be an expensive 24 hours if it was stolen.
Jim Says:
November 8th, 2006 at 11:01 amVisit Jim
While in Hawaii, every merchant that we went to asked to see our ID. I made a comment to one of them that it was nice and almost no one does that in Maryland. I think if a study was done, Hawaii would be a leader in least number of fraudulent charges.
Blair Says:
November 16th, 2006 at 4:01 pmVisit Blair
Good post P - I’ve had my company call me a few times when i was traveling to a ton of cities in a few weeks time - they wanted to make sure that all the gas charges in the various states were legit. Very good to know that someone is looking out for you.
They also almost always check ID here in Cali too - even for super cheap purchases at the grocery store. There is a huge difference, back in MD I only know of one or two stores that even check the signiture - here they scour your id like you were trying to buy alcohol. The only instances I see where they don’t look at your ID are when you selfcheck out. I know that in California you are technically not allowed to not sign your card and write “see ID” - it couldn’t hurt to sign AND write see ID.