Security is key and that’s not debatable. In virtually everything that we value, from our jobs to relationships, and even our credit cards, we need to protect it with all we’ve got.
However, the only disturbing reason why you could afford to mess around with your job, relationship and not your credit card is because unlike the other two, being careless towards your card details could eventually lead you to serving a jail term. I mean, if your card has been hacked and used in a fraudulent act, all attention will be directed towards you because your information is on the card, and nobody will care to believe if you did it or not. It’s that serious.
So, if you don’t want your finances, privacy, and even your social security to be at the mercy of cyber hackers who roam the internet looking for prey to devour, its best you adopt the following strategies to help enhance your credit card security.
Endeavour to Visit Your Credit Reports Regularly
The best way to stay safe in the face of any cyber case is to be preventive. In other words, the earlier you’re able to spot any suspicious activity on your account, by carefully checking every transaction and statement, the best for you. The thing is, most cyber thefts won’t just hack your credit card’s details and start using them immediately, NO. Mostly, they’ll start with insignificant transactions before they get into leaving you bankrupt with a heavy one sooner or later. So, when going through your report, serially confirm that every transaction was made by you or whoever has your card’s details too. Once you find anything suspicious, do not hesitate to send a signal to your credit card company, demanding them to block the account for a physical verification. You can check your credit card report using Experian, credit bureaus, Equifax or TransUnion.
Avoid Password Similarities
If there is any grievous mistake that most people do, which tends to make their cards vulnerable to cyber attacks is when they use similar password. That’s totally unacceptable. These guys hacking your details are humans, and will probably get clues of your password from your name or username. So what can you do to prevent this?
Pick a notebook or using your journal, make different password for your email, a different password for your social media accounts, and so on, then write them down. The point here is to ensure no account has a repeated password, that way, it will be easy for you to access and harder for the hacker to attack you. If you’d love to spice up the security a bit, you can decide to add upper cases and symbols to make them less predictable.
In essence, avoid passwords that have a connection to your username or name, use different passwords for every account you have online and write them down somewhere safe, add characters to your passwords with upper cases, and avoid using your Social Security Number online too often.
Keep a close eye on your mailbox
If you’ve been using credit cards for quite some time now, you’d agree with me that most of your payment receipt, and other vital information about your credit card are often being sent you through your email right? Now, if you’re careless with your email account, you could be jeopardising your financial security.
So, how can you protect your mail? For instance, let’s say you’re using the Gmail service, you can add some extra security like the two-step authentication which will make accessibility to your mail, a bit tasking for visitors. This way, they will have to hack both your password and mobile number. Trust me, they don’t have that much time to waste on breaking Google securities, because they know it won’t work!
Shred your redundant documents
Most of these hackers often pose themselves as trash pickers, with the aim of looking for those who will just trash their waste documents without shredding them. So, next time you want to trash documents that you’re aware can give a bridge into your privacy, endeavour to shred it before dumping them. That way, it will be hard for them to piece up everything.
Be Conscious on Social Media
Unarguably, social media has helped our lives in a lot of areas like communication, where you can get to talk to whoever you want irrespective of their location, and also post to the world things about your life on your social media wall. Now, while the former is cool because communication is key, the latter might be somehow putting you in danger and here is why. Most of these hackers go to their victim’s social media profiles to find clues to their passwords and security questions like in the name of their pet dog, where they attended college and all. And once they get those information, they can actually reset your password thus hacking the account successfully.
So, when you get on your social media platform, why not just stick to communication rather than advertising things about yourself?And speaking of communication.
Know who you communicate with
Be cautious of any stranger who makes contact with you trying to draw some high profile data about you like your bank details, credit card information and so on. Those are nothing but hackers!
In summary, you have to be very sensitive when it comes to protecting your credit card details because, failure to do so may have you paying for a crime you didn’t commit!