Credit card fraud can be prevented with the help of credit monitoring services, but for those who are not yet signed to these services, you have rights under the law if you become a victim or credit fraud.

1. First thing you must do is get a police report filled out. Many states won’t have a specific law for this, but you must be persistent, as this report will entitle you to the following:

• A 7 year fraud alert
• A credit freeze
• Have inaccurate or fraudulent data blocked from your credit reports
• Get copies of all transactions records on fraudulent accounts

2. You have the right to have those fraudulent accounts removed from your credit report once you have gathered the necessary evidence about the fraud, including any collections notices or inquiries.

How to organize your credit fraud case:

• Keep a detailed log of your time and efforts, including all phone calls you receive or make, including names of people you talk to, their titles, phone numbers, company name and notes about the conversation.
• Mail all correspondence certified with a return receipt requested to confirm it has been delivered. Keep the postcards you receive back as evidence.
• Get confirmation of all conversations and agreements in writing, people leave companies all the time and that person may not be around to see that agreement through.
• Maintain an expense log, where you record the time and money you’re investing into resolving your credit fraud case.

3. Work with the right people. You’ll waste a lot of time if you hire or talk to the wrong people about your case. Insist on speaking with someone on the fraud or investigative side of a company or government agency. Customer service is never the right place to start discussing your credit fraud problem.

If your case is beyond credit card fraud and it involves other aspects of your identity, check the resources listed on the Identity Theft Victims page.

Once your case is resolved and your credit report is back to a healthy status, consider a solid identity theft or credit monitoring service that can provide advanced credit fraud alerts to help you act quickly.

The scanning technology employed by some of these providers is outstanding, being able to detect subscriber information on illegal information trading sites is one of the best benefits of the service.

Taking a proactive and consistent approach to protecting your credit means understanding and accepting the responsibility for it. Making payments on time and never cutting corners or compromising when it comes to the security of your credit cards, bank accounts, and every other aspect of your personal identity.

These points may sound obvious but are often ignored by consumers, and it is when we let our guard down that we create chances for identity thieves to take advantage of our smallest mistakes to earn themselves a big payday. Protecting your credit involves a significant time investment from you, but is is part of the responsibility of being issued credit.

Minimizing the Risks of Fraud

Credit card fraud is one of the most common and most lucrative crime trends. It’s also one of the easiest to do and get away with, and the hardest to detect without the proper credit monitoring in place. Identity thieves are opportunistic and use phishing, skimming, and dumpster diving as methods of digging for key pieces of information such as your social security number, credit card numbers, csv verification numbers and anything they can use to either abuse your existing credit accounts or open new ones under your name.

Victims of credit fraud are often left with the daunting task of restoring their credit and their good names at a significant cost of both time and money. Here’s how you outsmart the scammers and minimize your risks for credit fraud.

1. Pay close attention to your billing cycles – contact your credit card company or bank if your statements do not arrive when they should.
2. Watch out for mail fraud – redirecting mail is very easy to do, know when your statements should arrive and do your best to secure your mail box with a lock. Never leave mail unattended and use a cross-cut shredder to destroy junk mail that contains your personal information.
3. Password protect everything – take advantage of additional security features offered by your credit provider or bank, such as password protection. Many people often see these extra steps as a burden rather than a benefit and this is letting your guard down.
4. Protect your personal information – you need to be cautious about who you give your information to, always know who you’re dealing with. Phone, email and snail mail phishing scams are still around because they still work, millions of people in the US fall victim to these each year.
5. Leave your SSN card at home – it’s a common habit to carry everything you may one day need with you in your wallet, it’s also a big mistake and an easy way to lose a lot of critical personal information at once. Your SSN is one of the most valuable pieces of information an identity thief can get their hands on, it means an easy pay day.
6. Shop securely online – when shopping online make sure you’re only doing it on secured sites. Make sure the address starts with https:// and look for the lock symbol somewhere in the footer of your browser, or the SSL (secure socket layer) text somewhere on the page.
7. Consider credit monitoring and/or identity theft protection – protecting against credit fraud and identity theft isn’t a fun job at all. The most convenient and practical way to protect your credit is to automate the process with these services. It’s instant peace of mind.

The black market is a busy place where the data that’s acquired by hackers via security breaches is traded daily. Kapersky Labs reports that the credit card numbers traded at these sites are sold at very attractive prices. Credit cards are priced by origin, for example stolen credit cards from Germany would sell for $6, while US credit cards for around $2.

There are only a handful of these sites around and they’re obviously not easily found, it’s a very tight circle, these sites aren’t at all marketed, those who know how to find them are repeat customers. They even have customer support in both English and German.

How does your stolen credit card number end up at these sites? Well it all happens online, for the consumer it may start with viruses and spyware that end up on a user’s PC. These infections are designed to spy on the user’s activities while online, they capture user name and password information for credit card and banking sites.

Security Breaches occur when hackers successfully penetrate security layers from companies that have large databases of consumers information that store information such as social security information and credit card numbers. These breaches occur hundreds of times a year exposing critical information and costing consumers and companies billions of dollars every year.

If you suspect your information has been exposed by a breach, or a virus or spyware on your system, report stolen credit cards and keep a close eye on your balances, and get your fraud alerts activated as soon as possible. A stolen credit card is not always easily recognized, people who actually use your credit card number may be cautious about how they spend your money, so studying your statements carefully is absolutely necessary.

If you want to properly prevent identity theft and the consequences of it, credit monitoring is a good way to get started, this protects your credit cards, debit and share check, and banking accounts from fraud.

Other more advanced identity theft systems like Trusted ID and LifeLock offer a more broad range of features to monitor different aspects of your identity. Identity theft is complicated and its prevention even more involved, so the services of such companies are the best way to automate the process.

Some of these practices include:

• never giving out credit card information over the phone
• never responding to email or phone phishing scams
• never lending your credit card to anyone
• shopping online with secure sites only
• always keep track of where your cards are
• only carry the card that you need in your wallet and put away the ones you hardly ever use
• always submit credit card information with caution
• know who you’re dealing with at all times

Credit card protection can also be automated through special services that make it easier to set up and receive credit card fraud alert notices and even insure the card holder against heavy losses sometimes incurred due to misuse and identity theft.

The biggest danger to consumers today is not their own carelessness, it’s the data loss that occurs during security breaches. Companies that handled credit card information today have a huge problem securing consumer information. The high cost of technology and overhead of maintaining this information makes it challenging and the attempts from hackers to penetrate these systems to obtain this information is a constant threat.

Credit card protection services or credit monitoring services provide a good level of security for ensuring the card owner does not become a victim of identity theft. Credit information is all too easily available from too many sources and in many cases credit card numbers along with social security numbers are made available on black market sites where this information can be traded for money.

Credit fraud will always be a popular trend because it is always lucrative and easy to get away with. To get the credit card protection you need now and stay in charge of your credit, consider the services of identitylookout.com, also receive a 30-day trial of their identity theft protection service.

The credit industry invests a lot of money in gathering leads to send pre approved offers to, and these lists of names and other sensitive information comes from no other sources than the credit bureaus. This is a major source of revenue for these companies.

Having consumer information widely distributed the way it is done today between credit bureaus and credit card companies is highly risky for the consumer, as it creates opportunities for identity theft. The pre approved credit card offers do not typically contain anything other than name and address of the recipient and normally a social security number is also required for the application to be processed successfully.

How identity theft happens with pre approved offers

As mentioned above your social security number is needed to complete a pre approved credit offer but savvy thieves can in most cases figure out the missing information either by researching public records or phishing for the information by contacting the targeted victim.

Another way that these pre approved offers can be dangerous is if the thief redirects your mail to another location where he can have access to your mail, the thief could have access to all your current credit card statements and bank statements as well and not just any pre approved credit card offers that may come in the mail. These are obviously very dangerous events especially if any of the mail you receive ever comes with your social security number.

Your mail doesn’t really have to be redirected, it can be stolen from you mailbox if your mailbox does not have a lock. Thieves will figure that if you’re getting pre approved credit card offers you must have a somewhat decent credit file. The best thing to do in cases like this is to get a P.O Box address and redirect your own mail there.

One other way that consumers may create possibilities for identity theft with pre approved offers is by throwing these offer letters in the trash whole. It is never wise to discard of any type of document that contains your name, address, phone number or especially your social security number. Putting these credit card offers in the trash without shredding them is simply asking for it. Identity thieves may sometimes resort to digging through trash to find any information they can use, this is commonly known as “dumpster diving“.

How to opt out of credit card offers

Credit card companies resort to these aggressive approaches to gain members in order to continue growing and sustain an escalating profit margin. However, no consideration is given to the risks they create by continuously mailing out these offers. When identity theft occurs, creditors will always hold the victim responsible for the debt until they can prove otherwise. When this occurs, it is the victim who must work to resolve this and credit card companies will not begin their own investigation until a police report is filed and an identity theft affidavit is filled out. So if identity theft results from pre approved offers addressed to you that you never asked for, you’re still responsible. That’s the bottom line.

Is there a way to stop this madness? Yes, absolutely. You have the right to opt out of credit card offers by visiting the Opt Out Pre screen site. This is the official site run by the credit bureaus where you exercise your right to put a stop to the trading of your information. You could also contact the credit bureaus directly but this is the quickest way.

There are limits to the time you can remain opted out, but if you have been the victim of identity theft then usually you can remain opted out longer. Once your period of opting out expires simply opt out again. Pre approved offers do not have to be a burden to you.

How credit card fraud occurs

Credit fraud can occur online, particularly when a computer system is not protected with antivirus and spyware software that can keep malicious intrusions out. However, online credit fraud is not the main source of the crime, credit card fraud is facilitated to identity theft criminals mostly in the conventional ways. That is, while we run common transactions such as taking money out of the ATM, ordering a pizza over the phone, writing our credit card number on a bill etc. Other ways thieves are able to get direct information about your credit accounts is by redirecting your mail by submitting a change of address card to the post office.

Once a thief gets a hold of your mail, they may or may not use the same accounts you have active, if they have enough information on you, they may instead attempt to open a new account. But most often they’re looking for a credit card number they can use for online transactions. Your credit statements will often contain your credit card number and the expiration date, and although the CVV or CV2 (card verification value) number won’t appear on your statement, not all merchants require it to complete online orders.

Another method used for acquiring consumer information to commit credit fraud is known as “dumpster diving“. This is when thieves dig through your trash to find readable information they can use. This is still an effective method since probably “most” people don’t bother to shred paperwork that contains their personal information. Ripping up these documents does not always destroy the documents completely. Any information they find can be used to attack existing accounts or open up new ones.

Of course the easiest thing for a thief to do is steal the physical credit card. When your wallet or purse are lost or stolen thieves will act quickly to use the credit accounts to make purchases before you report the cards stolen. Carrying the phone numbers of the credit card companies in your wallet won’t do any good should your wallet disappear.

Even if you’re savvy enough to guard your own credit accounts, there are other ways that your account numbers can be exposed and that is through security breaches, which often means that companies you do business with failed to secure your information. This often happens when their computer systems are hacked or their employees commit the credit card fraud by either selling consumer account information or using it themselves.

Credit card fraud protection

Because credit fraud and credit card scams are rather a “when” and not an “if”, there are many ways to establish a fraud protection system to work for you. However, not all credit card fraud protection services work the same.

Your credit card company may extend this service for free depending on the type of account you have, although they typically are only concerned with protecting the credit card account you have with them and not all of your credit accounts, which can be ok if you only have one credit card. Fraud protection is in fact a big business and although it does cost extra in most cases, it is an absolute necessity, especially if the the credit account is very active.

Credit monitoring is one service that can monitor your credit accounts and your credit report, this type of service will alert you when suspicious activities occur on any of your accounts. The goal of this service is to alert you immediately so you can take action before further damage occurs. However, it can not prevent the credit fraud from happening.

Identity theft prevention services are perhaps the most effective means of protection against credit card fraud. These services were established with the intention of providing a complete system of protection that includes not only your credit card accounts but your social security number, and in some services, your medical benefits. This type of protection can in fact stop the fraud before it happens.

How to report credit card fraud

It’s important that if your wallet is lost or stolen you’re able to reach your credit providers and banks to report your cards missing and either suspend or cancel the accounts before they can be used. If you have noticed that your credit statements have stopped arriving to your mail box, or if you notice that there are charges on your credit accounts that you did not make, you must move immediately to report the credit fraud.

To learn how to report credit card fraud and any other type of identity theft, please follow the directions on our “reporting identity theft” article. There you’ll find all the details you need to get the process started.