starbucks credit card theft
http://www.inquisitr.com/2680987/customer-confronts-starbucks-employee-for-stealing-her-credit-card-information-video-goes-viral/
Better watch where you buy things
Go online to each of the credit bureaus and choose to freeze your credit.
Bear in mind that
1. Some states will allow the bureaus to charge you to freeze it - and charge you to temporarily thaw it, and charge to permanently lift the freeze. The fees vary from $3 to $10 bucks.
2. Each bureau will issue a PIN - if you lose that PIN - it is a herculean task to unfreeze/thaw your credit again.
3. With your credit frozen, shopping for insurance, mortgages, apartments and cell phones can be problematic. The people that you authorize to run your credit will not be able to do so, so you would get declined.
But - if you're not likely to move, get a new cell phone, apply for a new credit card, etc. any time soon, the credit freeze can bring good peace of mind.
This is a good tip to insure that a thief will not open a line of credit (to pilfer then default upon) in your name, but I don't think it protects against fraudulent use of your existing lines of credit/credit cards.Quote: ukaserexNot many people know this - but you can "freeze" your credit, making it impossible for the ne'er-do-wells to do such things.
Go online to each of the credit bureaus and choose to freeze your credit.
Bear in mind that
1. Some states will allow the bureaus to charge you to freeze it - and charge you to temporarily thaw it, and charge to permanently lift the freeze. The fees vary from $3 to $10 bucks.
2. Each bureau will issue a PIN - if you lose that PIN - it is a herculean task to unfreeze/thaw your credit again.
3. With your credit frozen, shopping for insurance, mortgages, apartments and cell phones can be problematic. The people that you authorize to run your credit will not be able to do so, so you would get declined.
But - if you're not likely to move, get a new cell phone, apply for a new credit card, etc. any time soon, the credit freeze can bring good peace of mind.
If I steal your card/number and then run to Walmart to buy $500 worth of toilet paper and Justin Bieber CD's, they won't run a credit check, they'll just swipe my (your) card and tell me to have a nice day.
However, it's much easier to inform the credit card company of fraudulent charges (which you are not liable for*) than to clean up after an ID thief who opened an account in your name, drained it, and then defaulted on the payments. From what I have heard (never had to deal with it myself), the latter is truly a b###h, and credit freezing will certainly protect against this.
Quote: ukaserexNot many people know this - but you can "freeze" your credit, making it impossible for the ne'er-do-wells to do such things.
As already has been said, the credit bureau freeze only protects from someone checking your credit and supposedly from opening new lines of credit (which normally requires a credit check first.) However, sometimes a credit card can be opened (particularly pre-approved offers) without checking your credit. The credit bureau freeze has no effect on your existing lines of credit.
I've had my credit frozen for several years but that didn't stop someone from purchasing airline tickets using my AmEx through a travel agency in Chicago. Thankfully I had $0 liability for the charges and AmEx issued me a new card, but considering that the passenger names and travel date was on my statement, I've wondered if/how they got busted.
Quote: ukaserex2. Each bureau will issue a PIN - if you lose that PIN - it is a herculean task to unfreeze/thaw your credit again.
I lost my Equifax PIN. I mailed a written request for a new PIN as indicated on their website but didn't get a response. I called and was able to get a PIN over the phone after answering some questions.
Quote: ukaserex3. With your credit frozen, shopping for insurance, mortgages, apartments and cell phones can be problematic. The people that you authorize to run your credit will not be able to do so, so you would get declined.
When you need to shop for those things, that's when you temporarily thaw your credit for up to 30 days. However, having frozen credit thwarts impulsively signing up for a store credit card while you're out shopping.
Credit freeze is cheap insurance, better than paying for credit monitoring. Credit freeze prevents the act while credit monitoring just lets you know it happened.
The CC companies caught the fraud and I had zero liability and got new cards. Chase was much better at detecting the fraud than CitiBank was. (I had to alert Citi). I find Chase has better customer service overall, as well.
There's a whole industry set up to take and pay at online casinos now, including using your credit card. It's very intricate since it is technically illegal to process transactions for online gambling.Quote: ukaserexI thought there was a lot of difficulty in using charge cards at those online casinos. In fact, I've had transactions not approved because they were considered "off-shore" casinos. But, that was over a dozen years ago. I guess things have changed.
Quote: BlueEagleCredit freeze is cheap insurance, better than paying for credit monitoring. Credit freeze prevents the act while credit monitoring just lets you know it happened.
There's really no reason CC companies couldn't offer the ability to set or unset a certain limit on your card that you maintain yourself from your phone or internet connection.
Much like the ability to control whether a cell phone keeps working after it's stolen.
I've heard excuses why this isn't done. Instead, the industry makes everyone pay essentially for them trying to do it themselves, or cover their losses if someone can run up your card, that cost is paid for essentially by consumers sooner or later.
