We all know that we have to be careful now a days with our personal information.  But this is something that you may not be doing and this happened to me.

I paid for a purchase in a store I know very well, and have always used.  When I got to the check out counter to make my purchase, I wanted to use my Credit Card.

No problem, I used it as usual, but the clerk distracted me, by showing me necklaces and jewelry at the side of the counter, she thought would go with my new outfit.  I had already handed her my credit card for the clothes, before she did this. 

She said it would be no problem to just add another purchase to my total.  I did look at the necklaces, and found one I liked and made the purchase with my credit card and thought nothing else about it.

Only to find a couple of weeks later, while doing some online banking, that my credit card had been used in another part of the country.  The only saving grace for me, was that the limit on this card was only 1000.00 dollars, and this person tried to charge more than that.  They kept adjusting their purchase until it was within my limit and got away with it!

Afte reporting it, I felt violated, and when the investigator phoned me back, the culprits had actually had a credit card with my number on it, but with a different name so they could sign it no problem.   He said after investigating further, the fraud was traced back to the store that I made my clothing purchase at.  He asked if they had distracted me at check out, and I had to admit they did.  During that brief moment, she was able to quickly slide my card through a pocket sized reader and get my information.  I was devastated, as this was my favorite store.

So, far the criminals cannot figure out your credit limit or how much you have used, so they make up new cards and sell them to other people and they see how much they can get away with.

Here are 3 tips he told me to watch out for:

1.  Distractions when paying for your items.. this is the most popular way

2.  Pretending to drop your card on the floor and on the way back up they quickly copy it.

3.  Letting the card out of your site, such as with restaurants, or gas stations..

They now use small pocket sized readers to scan your information, so it can be done quite quickly, and then bingo... credit card fraud!

So, be careful, or credit card fraud can happen to you.  I had to get a new credit card, that now has a pin number and am very careful where I use it.

Be careful with your credit card, YES, it can happen to you!