I have been given to understand that Europeans don't have identity theft... Americans have it, maybe nearly all of it afaik... it has something to do with the fact that Europeans don't use their SSI numbers for identity or something... Very recently I learned that we can't rely on the guys that charge $100 a year to file our fraud alerts with the Credit Reporting Agencies... the agencies took them to court and got a ruling that no third parties were allowed.. the agencies have been very uncooperative with the law passed so that we could protect our identities... so Congress has utterly failed us for decades in this area and ID theft is still rampant.. I destroyed my own credit and stiffed the lenders a few years ago.. why wait for somebody else.. if the system f%^ks you over then burn it... I guess we're supposed to get pissed at the ID thieves when it's all preventable in the first place.. the credit reporting agencies seem to be complicit with the thieves. Who knows what's really going on...
Even when Lifelock worked, they only monitored and did fraud alerts. The only way to stop it cold is with a credit freeze, free in some states.
"Ruland and Price were able to obtain fraudulent credit cards by using "instant credit kiosks" located inside Wal-Mart stories, according to court documents. They would input names and other details from the stolen identities into the machines and often receive a temporary document with credit limits as high as $2,000. The kiosks were provided by GE Capital." LOL
I froze my credit, it cost me a grand total of 21 dollars for all three credit bureaus.(one time fee) I was issued a "pin" number & can unfreeze the reports for a period of time of my choice if needed for credit purposes. http://www.consumersunion.org/campaigns/learn_more/003484indiv.html
I plan on never using a credit card if possible for this very sort of reason, when you want something and don't have the money yet you do the intelligent thing and save up or invest. The sooner we drop the stupid notion that we can get everything for free and pay for it later the better.
We have ID theft in the UK but for some reason its not as widespread as the US maybe the KYC rules are followed a bit more rigidly over here. A friend was asked for SSN, copy of his drivers license and of course CC for a NY gym membership guess what 6 weeks later somebody opens an account at bank in Georgia in his name gets a line of credit and f*cks off.
What do you do when you want airline tickets? Do you go through the hassle of paying cash every time you buy gas?
I use a debit card with no overdraft for everything.. If I want to make a large purchase I get online and transfer money from the Savings Account to the Checking.. if somebody uses it my loss is limited...
A credit card protects you from identity theft more than a Debit Card. I'm pretty sure that your maximum liability if your credit card number is ever used fraudulently is much lower than that for a Debit card, and the time period for reporting it stolen is longer as well.