PAY CASH ! It is the safest way to pay and saves time as well. Cancel all your cards ! Close all your bank accounts! Keep the cash under your mattress.
Hell, even checks are not safe. You definitely need to use true cash. I'll give a perfect example with my company. We paid our telephone bill to AT&T. It went to their regional processing center in St. Louis. Banks have gotten smart. They got the law changed. They ARE NO LONGER RESPONSIBLE FOR FRAUD. If they have positive pay available and you don't use it, if there is fraud, you pay for it. For those who don't know what positive pay is, the check writer notifies the bank of every check number, date, and amount of every check they write. Anyway, back to the story. The check I wrote to AT&T was for 674.00. Within two weeks there were 8 checks for 67,493.23 hitting my bank all with the same check number. All from different states as well. Had I not had positive pay those checks would have cleared, and I would be shit out of luck.
I prefer to make it a habit (not worry) in protecting particular confidential information. Like I said, always review your credit reports, credit card statements, bank statements et cetera... Just the basic stuff to ensure something odd has occurred. I don't know about you guys...I read every bill that comes in my mail box. I don't read it too look for any fraudulent use. I read it to make sure its accurate and I do occasionally catch an error anywhere from a few bucks to a few hundred dollars. However, on two seperate occassions, I have discover fraudulent use. I don't worry because I know what's on my bill. Here's something funny or cool... It's a law here that if a grocery store rings up the incorrect price on your grocery bill for any particular item... You get that item free. My spouse (not me)...catches about $25 bucks worth of errors each month. She can scan a grocery bill in seconds while standing in the land to look for any errors. Makes since considering I saw a documentary on TV about how inaccurate the labeling bar codes are being used today in most stores. Apparently the average person pays each year about $125 extra due to bar code errors. Most of these errors goes unnoticed unless your my spouse. Mark
That's a valid concern. Many new credit cards offer the option of a password and a pin code. You should see T Mobile, they won't give my account details until I give them my pin code.
In America the law protects you better against fraudulent credit card transactions than fraudulent checks, from my recollection.
I am sure all of us the worked in restaurant remember the 7 second rule righ? :eek: I honestly never did it, but I have seen and heard about it being done! :eek:
You guys might be interested in JJ Luna's book, How to be invisible, it's great for privacy and stuff like that. No I don't get a kickback, just trying to help out my fellow man. His website is howtobeinvisible.com.