Blame the Turks, I say!!! Blame them!!

Ok, that is a stretch....I am referring more to the country of origin in which the impropriety that I will explain happened to a very good friend of mine recently. I have this friend who is techno-savvy. Smart guy, bla, bla, bla.....Well, he noticed that when he was attempting to pay for goods or services with his debit card last week, that the store, restaurant, etc. would say there was a problem with the card. The first time it happened, it did not seem for cause to worry, but the third time really caused this guy to wonder what was going on. Therefore, he calls his bank and they let him know (AFTER he called his bank) they did suspect something was happening with his card in terms of fraud and they put some type of flag on the transactions because they looked out of the ordinary and the country of origin was pretty far from Detroit. The bank was able to trace it to the country of Turkey. The thief racked up multiple charges and they actually cleaned out his checking account! We have all read the news or seen news stories about identity theft and I just want to remind everyone that it is alive and well and you should do what you can to minimize it. You CANNOT completely prevent it since most of our lives are on the Internet and comprising bank security is something the "bad guys" are trying to do everyday. When you purchase items online, NEVER use your debit card. Use a credit card because in terms of disputing fraudulent charges, the headaches are not as great with a credit card and you don't have to wait 30-60 for the bank to finish up their investigation and return money to your account.

Check out the following url for some info on reducing your pain when it comes to using a credit card: 22ways to foil credit card thieves