Credit Card Fraud – Sneaky Methods

Recently I personally have had two of my credit cards with fraud activity in the past month! I have used credit cards for 20 years and have never had an incident until now! The really strange thing is that the credit cards that had the fraud activity were ones that I do not use often. I only used the one credit card twice in the past 6 months to a year and the other I just used for groceries and purchases from certain vendors. My wallet was not stolen. Both credit cards were in my possession. It baffles me how the numbers were stolen and even more so how my one credit was used physically (since I had it in my possession) to make a purchase in a store. The person was asked to show ID since they were making a large purchase and could not display it. This caused suspicion and the credit card company brought it to my attention. I now understand that people are making duplicate credit cards with your numbers and using for in store purchases. Very scary. This particular credit card was one that I hardly used. My only purchases in the last six months were airline tickets online and an Amazon purchase. How did they obtain my information? Was the security of either of these two purchases compromised? How are these people getting this information?

One month later – it happened with another one of my credit cards. This particular credit card I use more often but with only a few vendors and grocery stores. What happened here? It appeared that most of the purchases that were made were small and were done online (I think). One was even a dollar donation to a blood bank!! How generous of this thief!

My concern is now raised! What other information of mine did these people get their hands on? I still plan to use my credit cards. My behavior already is cautious but how are these people getting a hold of my private information? For my safety and sanity I decided to look into fraud protection. I looked at a few and decided on Life Lock. For $99 I get $1M fraud protection, lost wallet protection, credit report monitoring and protection, black market protection, credit card protection and elimination of junk mail. I call it sanity. Too bad we now have to carry insurance on our name but that is what it has come down to…

Stumble it!