A Guide to Credit Card Safety It’s common practice to pay with a
credit card when eating at a restaurant. Oftentimes, the signed
receipt gets left at the empty table until it’s bussed for the
next party. That’s enticing for a dishonest person to get your
name from the receipt and begin the process of digging for gold.
Some unscrupulous servers and store clerks will carry a small
device called a credit card skimmer . With a quick additional
swipe of your credit card, the thief puts credit card numbers in
storage and will create fake cards with which to make purchases,
or sell the card numbers to other thieves. Until the monthly
statement becomes available, a cardholder has no idea that
fraudulent purchases were made, on the phone, over the internet,
or even in person, with his or her credit card number. These are
examples of identity theft, and reasons for diligence in keeping
credit cards and account numbers out of the hands of the wrong
people. Identity theft happens when a person obtains someone
else's pers