There is a constant battle about who bears the brunt of the responsibility for consumer credit card security. The credit card companies, merchants, credit card processing companies, providers of
POS terminals, and customers who hold credit cards all want the other entities involved to invest more time and resources into creating safeguards against credit card fraud. While all the players that make a profit from credit card use in the United States and Canada have made many changes to protect consumers, in the end it is the credit card holder who has the most to lose from fraud, and thus who end up feeling the most acute sense of responsibility for protecting him or herself.
Every time you – the customer and cardholder – swipe a credit or debit card at one of the millions of POS terminals across the country, you create an opportunity for thieves to steal your information and use it to make fraudulent purchases at your expense. There are several risky habits you can stop and safer ones you can develop to mitigate risk when using your credit card in person at a point of sale. First, be cautious about how you handle and when you carry your credit cards. Leaving a card lying out on a counter is just inviting someone to quickly memorize the information, and the more cards you carry with you the more likely you are to drop one or leave it out and not notice immediately.
Likewise, don’t write any account information anywhere that can be seen publically, such as an envelope. Keeping a sheet with all relevant credit information locked away somewhere in case of card loss is a good idea, but letting the mailman or anyone who walks by your mailbox see this information isn’t. This may seem obvious, but never sign a blank charge slips or receipts, and draw a line through any blank fields on slips relating to charging your card.
These steps are all about making it harder for thieves to get access to a physical copy of your credit card information. But sometimes the worst happens despite your best efforts, perhaps even due to an error on the merchant’s end. For this reason it is also important to save credit purchase receipts, and then compare all these receipts with your monthly statement to make sure every charge is accounted for. If you have online banking, you can also check your credit activity online much more regularly. Along the same lines, many experts suggest that you should only choose credit cards that come with an extra layer of security and fraud monitoring, or buy that service for each card if it doesn’t come included.
Regardless of how you choose to monitor credit activity, the point is to minimize opportunities for thieves to access your data at or after you use your card at a POS terminal, and to keep a close eye on your statements so that if anything untoward does happen, you catch it immediately.