How Can You Know If Someone Has Your Credit Card

Ever had that sinking feeling, where you’ve logged in to check your credit card balance – only to find credit card transactions that you never authorised?

It’s a terrible feeling of violation when you discover that you’ve become a victim of identity theft or credit card fraud, and it’s impacting more and more people every year.

Credit card fraud cost the UK banking industry more than £600 million pounds in 2008, according to card watch, up 14% on 2007 figures. While victims are largely protected from having to pay for the fraudulent transactions, the personal cost in terms of the time and energy spent investigating with your bank, waiting for a new card to be issued, and being without access to your account for up to a week is much more difficult to quantify.

Your identity and your personal information are very valuable, and should be treated as such. Professional criminals use cunning strategies to find out your personal details and use it to open or access bank accounts and credit cards, so it’s important to protect your personal information as best you can.

If you are concerned that your credit card may have been accessed fraudulently, your first step is to contact your credit card provider. Go through all of your recent transactions with them and pinpoint any unusual debits. If you believe a fraudulent transaction exists, cancel your card immediately and file a complaint in writing with your bank.

Next, you need to look at your credit report in detail, to make sure that no other accounts have been compromised. If you find any entries on your credit report that relate to organisations you don’t normally deal with, contact them immediately and ask for full details of the account.

To give yourself the best possible opportunity to rectify the damage, it’s important that you keep record of your communications, including the name of the people you speak to, the date and time of the call. The same goes for written correspondence, both on email and in hard copy, for letters that you send or receive.

If there is evidence of credit card fraud, the credit reference agency you are dealing with will then make contact with affected lenders on your behalf, in order to restore your credit history to its former state. Your credit reference agency will keep you informed about the progress of your case and will also advise you of amendments to your credit report.

To avoid becoming a victim of credit card fraud in the first place, make sure you keep all of your plastic cards safe, and when giving your card details over the phone on online, make sure other people can’t hear or see your personal information. For further information, visit identity theft.org.