Just because you use a debit card to make purchases, doesn’t mean you’re protected from fraud. Even if your card is stolen, the thief can’t do much unless he or she has your PIN number. However, there are a number of ways that criminals can trick you into revealing your PIN:
- The PIN is written somewhere in your wallet, on a piece of paper, or even on the card itself. If your entire purse or wallet is stolen, the first thing the thief will do is search for any passwords, or PINs that you may have written down somewhere.
- Easy to identify PIN numbers. Even if you don’t have your number written down in your purse or wallet, a thief can easily figure out the code if you’ve used something obvious like a birth date. A thief will look for that kind of personal information.
- There have been cases were legitimate ATM machines have been tampered with. A device that looks like the real thing is installed into the machine so that it scans your debit card, but sends the information to the wrong hands.
Debit card fraud can be avoided by choosing your PIN carefully (don’t make it anything that is easy to guess), watching your back when using bank machines, and being careful of anything that doesn’t look “normal” when you’re about to use an ATM machine.
When shopping online, always make sure that you shop online at merchants who have secure shopping carts. Instead of using your debit card to shop online, a safer alternative is to use online bill payment for your purchases. eBillme is the easy way to shop online and pay cash through online banking.
