Protecting Your Credit from Fraud

I do not know of a specific program. There are programs where you sign up, pay for the service and it supposedly watches your credit.

My opinion, why pay a service to do what you can do?

With our company and my husband on the road with travel, our credit card has been compromised more than once.

We have fraud alerts on all of our names, daughter included. This means IF someone tries to get credit one of our names, we are already flagged for fraud and the company will call us personally to see if we are trying to get credit. If we are not, then they take matters into their own hands legally.

We have one of the highest, best credit scores out there and we do strive to protect it.

This past Dec while we were in the midst of a re-fi on our home, hubby's laptop was stolen. It had EVERYTHING... because we were in process of paying down and closing on a new loan.

At this point, I notified all 3 credit reporting companies and instead of a fraud warning that still stays on our record... we froze our credit. Granted, if you do this and then you want credit, you go through some red tape to secure credit but no one can get into your account. We are not ones to borrow money and seek out credit so this works for us.

That said... we NEVER use debit cards. Like the poster below, someone can wipe out your bank account. You liability for having a credit card stolen or misused is much less... like $50 and much easier to fix.

We use the credit cards and they are paid in full monthly. I also reconcile the credit cards online almost daily (we run a business from home and use it a lot so there is potential of theft). Just in September I noticed a charge from Thrifty car rental for almost $400. That would be a pretty normal charge for us, however, on the dates that charge went through, my husband was not out of town and had not rented a car. We do use Thrifty so someone might have thought we wouldn't notice.

I just take a proactive approach and things have worked out well for us.

Another point and I am not sure if it pertains to you or not... regarding banking..

We have several customers who prefer to pay us via wire or ACH. As you know, if they have access to put $$ into an account, then they have access to take $$ out of an account.

I have a separate business account set up for ACH which I keep very little $$ in. As I get wires in, I transfer them to our operating account and if i choose to pay via wire or ACH, I send money from our operating account to the ACH account so that we don't compromise our main operating account.

This just keeps honest people honest in my opinion because if I have customer 1 who pays me $50,000 then they can't come in the next day and take it back out of that account. It is transferred immediately to the Operating account.

Maybe that's TMI but that is how I work it with our company and personal credit and banking.

There are services that claim to do this for you. Personally, I don't think there's anything that's 100%. Also, most of those services don't necessarily protect you, they help you if something happens

Also, your credit card company does actually watch for fraud. Once the credit card company called because we were using our card more frequently than usual. Another time we traveled out of th country (we had notified the credit company of this), but the company declined the card.

IMO being vigilant and using common sense is your best protection.

- review your annual credit card report regularly
- don't let your credit card out of your sight, like at restaurants
- you'd be amazed at how many people write their ss#'s on checks, never do this
- don't put your diver's license # on your checks
- carefully review your credit card statements, if possible review activity on a weekly basis, in most cases you can call and get the info from the automated service

I NEVER use a debit card. Although, they may be a little more secure than a credit card because they require a pin, if someone gets ahold of it, it only takes a very short time to do major damage that can be close to impossible to fix. Your entire bank account can be wiped out.

there are several ways.

Some people use the "life lock"
Some people use "3-in-1 credit check" from their banks - where they get a monthly credit report that tells them about activity on their credit.
Some people check their accounts daily, weekly, monthly.

Best way to protect against fraud? Don't use it. If you can't live on cash only - then you need to pay attention to where you use your card and what "electronics" are attached to it - like the "EZPAY" chip that allows you to hold your card up and not swipe - well - that can be highjacked fast...it's not fraud proof.

Keep all of your receipts and match them with the statement when it comes in. Or on-line - which ever you decide to do.

It's all about paying attention. That's the best way to avoid fraud. If it happens? Act on it immediately. Being pro-active will help you more than anything you can purchase.

This is kind-of basic - maybe not what you are thinking of - but we try to use either our credit card or cash for things. We never use our bank debit card as a visa. The reason - if someone steals your credit card number and uses it, the most you are liable for is $50. If someone steals your debit card number and uses it as a visa, they can wipe out your bank account and you have little recourse.

Bigger fraud - like someone taking out a credit card in your name that you don't know about - we just check our credit report annually.