The Personal Finance Podcast - 5 Steps to Take Immediately If Your Credit Card is Stolen!

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Starting point is 00:00:52 Hey fruit flies Your baby boom ends here Save the Everyday with Amazon On this episode of the personal finance podcast, five steps you need to take immediately if your credit card is stolen. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of mastermoney.com. And today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to be talking about what to do if your credit card is stolen. If you guys have any questions, make sure you hit us up on Instagram or TikTok at MasterMoney Co.

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Starting point is 00:02:23 if your credit card is stolen. And the reason why we are talking about this today is because credit card fraud and identity theft is on a massive rise and it is growing really, really quickly. And a lot more people now are having their information stolen. And it's an increasing problem that's happening so frequently

Starting point is 00:02:41 that most people actually just shrug it off when it happens. And this is, I'm going to talk to you why that is a major problem. A lot of people out there now, if they get their credit card number stolen, they just do the bare minimum. But the reason why you don't want to do that, and we're going to talk through that in this episode, is this is a long-term game. And some of these scammers will hold your information

Starting point is 00:03:00 for a very long period of time before they use it. So you want to make sure that you are doing the right things. And another problem is if people get a hold of your credit card, a lot of times they have a lot more information than you think they might have when they have your credit card number. And so we're going to talk about how to get rid of your information off the internet. So it makes it very difficult for these credit card scammers to actually utilize your card and utilize your personal information.

Starting point is 00:03:26 What you want to do is make sure that your personal information is very difficult to find. So what you need is you need an action plan every time something like this happens. And this can go for getting your credit card stolen. and it can go for a piece of your identity being stolen as well. On a future episode, we're going to talk about what you should do if your identity is stolen, because that's an incredibly important step that you need to look at as well. But this is a major factor to protect your online security

Starting point is 00:03:52 because this is the most common thing that happens to most people, is their credit card can get stolen. In fact, we pulled you guys on Instagram. I asked you guys, how many of you have had a credit card number stolen or your credit card stolen, and 44% of you said that you have, 56% said that it has not happened to them yet. But 44% that took that poll said they've had their credit card stolen before. And furthermore, I asked, well, if your credit card has been stolen, what did you actually do about it?

Starting point is 00:04:22 17%, and this is actually shocking to me, said they did absolutely nothing at all. Now, please, if this ever happens to you, do not be this person. Because this can create major long-term problems for you, depending on how much information is recovered over time. once they get that credit card number. Because once your credit card number is recovered, you are now a target. Because your information is being searched all over the place by scammers.

Starting point is 00:04:47 And this credit card number is being sold. It's being shuffled around. And you need to understand that you need to get rid of your information as fast as you possibly can. 61% of you, and this is what I think most people just do, is 61% just canceled their card,

Starting point is 00:05:02 but they did nothing else. Now, I'm going to explain why you need to do more than that. and there's a lot of reasons why you need to do more than that because the long-term game is why you need to protect yourself. You are protecting yourself from fraudsters and scammers online by doing additional things that you would not just be doing by canceling your card.

Starting point is 00:05:21 And then 22% said they canceled their card and they did more. So I'm going to show you the five things today that you need to be doing because 78% of people who we polled did not do enough. And I'm going to show you how to be in that top 22% so that you can make sure that you're protected for the long term. Every single time your information gets released and somebody has a hold of your information that should not have that information, you need to put your protection plan into play. Otherwise, you could have a very long-term problem dealing with some of these scammers.

Starting point is 00:05:53 Because if you do not get rid of them quickly, then all of a sudden your information is being passed around and you're going to have major issues there. There is a reason why cyber security is one of the fastest growing industries out there. And the reason for this is because it's a major problem. And the major problem is really with your financial information. Because these scammers, usually when they're scamming you, their intent is to get money. That is why they're doing it for the most part.

Starting point is 00:06:15 And the reason why this is happening is so that they can earn more money. So your credit cards are at risk here. And so you've got to make sure that you are protecting yourself and your personal losses. In fact, there was $28.5 billion of credit card scams in 2020. And Nielsen is reporting that over the next 10 years, they expect $408 billion to be stolen from credit card scams. This is a major problem.

Starting point is 00:06:39 It's going to impact a lot of people, so you have to understand how to protect yourself if this happens. Now, there's some key things to understand here, because financial fraud and identity theft both have really skyrocketed since the pandemic. And what these people do is they use your information to try to guess passwords, create new accounts, all these different things to create fraudulent transactions. Now, why does this matter so much? Now, I've had my identity stolen before,

Starting point is 00:07:04 and when I had my identity stolen, the steps that I had to take, let me tell you right now, were not fun. This is not fun stuff to have to go through. So you want to make sure that you have this plan in place to protect yourself because the faster you get this information off the internet,

Starting point is 00:07:18 the less susceptible you are to getting scammed in all these different ways. So the first thing we're going to look at here is how hackers actually get your information online so that you know and you can recognize situations where you maybe should not be giving out your credit card or you need to protect your information as much as possible. Then after that, we're going to be going through

Starting point is 00:07:38 how you can actually deal with this fraud and the five steps that you need to take. So without further ado, let's get into it. All right, so first you need to understand how hackers can get your credit card information. And the first place is unsecured websites. So one big thing you need to do is make sure that if you're visiting unsecured websites,

Starting point is 00:07:57 you have some information in place to protect yourself. This is why I do like using VPN specifically when you are surfing the web or buying things online. Because if you venture onto an unsecured website, then when your information is on there, it is a lot easier to collect that information when you're typing it in via hacker. So a lot of times you will see unsecured websites. Say, for example, you get an Instagram ad or you get a TikTok ad. Well, a lot of times, these are a third-party websites. Maybe it's a drop shipper or something along those lines, and you want to make sure that you are actually shopping

Starting point is 00:08:29 on a website that is completely secure because otherwise they're much more susceptible to hacks. So having those VPNs in place, maybe instead of buying whatever you're trying to buy on your phone, you send it over to your computer that has the VPN on there, and then you browse the web that way and purchase your item that way. There's a bunch of different things that you could do, but making to the website you were buying things on

Starting point is 00:08:48 is not an unsecured website without using some sort of protection on your computer. Now, the second one is they try to search for physical records containing your social security number. So this is why a lot of online cloud services, making sure you have really good passwords on things like maybe your Dropbox or Google Drive or any of those types of things that you utilize maybe for some tax forms or items like that, you've got to have really good passwords on those because a lot of times once they get your personal information, they are trying to get into those document centers.

Starting point is 00:09:18 And the reason for this is because there is a ton of personal information in there. So making sure you have really good passwords there is going to be incredibly important. The third way, and this gets a lot of people who are not experienced online, is phone or email phishing. Now, this is getting a lot better now, where a lot of times they will look like a normal website in your email of where you purchased something, and then you click the link, and then they collect some of your information that way. There's so many different email and phone phishing scams out there, so you just want to make sure that you are wary of any email that you click or any information that you give over the phone. Another big one is data breaches.

Starting point is 00:09:55 We're seeing data breaches in the news all of the time now from various companies. So data breaches are a big one. It is a way where millions and millions of people are impacted by this all at the same time when a data breach happened. So making sure that you reduce the amount of stores online that have your credit card on file, all of those different things are really, really incredibly important. Now, I know how much easier it is to shop online just to have your credit card on file. I do it as well.

Starting point is 00:10:24 I understand how much easier that is, but if you want to have the full suite of protection, removing that may be some of the best practice in order to ensure that your card is not stolen on some of those websites if there's a data breach. And then there's ATM credit card readers and or when you're at the gas station pump, all of those other things where scammers will put card reading devices on there so they can get your numbers and get your information based on whatever is in that card or that chip. So these are some of the ways that people try to get a hold of your credit card information. and these are just some of the things that you want to be weary about,

Starting point is 00:10:56 putting together a protection plan for those. We've talked about some of it about how to put together and protect your finances online. So make sure you listen to that episode. That episode is incredibly important to understand some of the things that you can do to protect yourself online as well. Now, let's get into the five steps you need to take immediately if your credit card is stolen.

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Starting point is 00:14:09 Because once somebody gets a hold of your credit card, what they're going to do is they are going to Google your name. They're going to try to find your address. They're going to try to find as much information as possible so that they can use that information to use the credit card as many times as they possibly can, specifically before you notice. So when you go through this process, you need to remove as much of the information about you online as possible. Now, this is a very laborous task to have to do because a lot of times these online data brokers, you have to go in there and you have to either send them a handwritten letter

Starting point is 00:14:39 or you have to send them an email or you have to go in there and beg and plea to get your information removed and it depends on local laws and all of these different complicated things. But there is a much better solution called Delete Me. And Delete Me is one of my favorite services that I have used in 2022, because for just over $100, you can get all of this information removed for you.

Starting point is 00:15:03 And I'm talking dozens and dozens and dozens of hours of your time back by just utilizing this one service. It is the best bang for your buck by far. If you value your time whatsoever, then you just utilizing delete me to remove all your personal information online. So you don't have this information scattered everywhere is incredibly powerful. And so we partner with delete.

Starting point is 00:15:25 me for this episode as well. And they're going to give you 20% off your services with promo code PFP. And we're going to link it up down below as well so that you can check them out. But this is one of my favorite services, like I said, that I've used within the last year. In fact, when I sent my information in to delete me, they deleted my information from thousands of different data broker websites. Now, why is this also powerful? Because it reduces the amount of robocalls that you get.

Starting point is 00:15:51 It reduces the amount of fishing attempts that you get. It reduces the amount of scam opportunity. that are available to these scammers when it comes to your personal information. So making sure you get that information removed is incredibly powerful. But specifically, it truly mitigates your risk of credit card fraud. And they just make it so incredibly easy. You answer a few questions, you put in your information, and boom, it starts to get removed immediately. And the coolest thing about Delete Me is that every single quarter, they continue to remove your information.

Starting point is 00:16:20 So four plus times per year, your information is getting removed and they continue to do this. It's a set it and forget it system. It's not like they're removing your information once, and then you've got to think of all about this again and next year. No, they're continuously doing this over time so that you don't have to worry about it anymore. It's out of sight, out of mind. Delete me handles it.

Starting point is 00:16:38 And if you find a website that you don't want your information on, you can tell Delete Me and they'll go in there and they'll take it off for you. They'll go investigate it for you and help you out with that as well. That is the coolest part about Delete Me, why I absolutely love this service. So you need to be doing this to protect yourself against credit card fraud. And if you've had your credit card, stolen, you definitely need to be doing this because your information is being passed around

Starting point is 00:16:58 via scammers on different lists that they have of people who have been scammed in the past, trying to use your information for other types of scams. So making sure that you get this off the internet is your biggest step that you need to take and the number one thing that you need to do first. Now, as you start to check your accounts and all of a sudden you realize there's a bunch of purchases on your credit card that you did not issue and there's a bunch of things on there where you did not pull cash out or something along those lines. Well, the first The first thing you need to do is you need to call your credit card company immediately. And you need to notify them by phone.

Starting point is 00:17:30 So usually what I do is I call them immediately. I have all my details ready and I hand over my information to the credit card issue saying, hey, these are a bunch of different transactions that I did not make. Now, a lot of the major credit card companies like MasterCard or Visa, they offer something called zero liability policies. What does that mean? What is a zero liability policy? That means that you're not held responsible for unauthorized transactions.

Starting point is 00:17:54 This is why it's so powerful to use your credit card when you're shopping online and use your credit card for as many transactions as possible because they have these protections on your card. And in most cases, now banks will also return your money to your account immediately, especially if a fraud case is pending. So back in the day, debit cards were not as safe as credit cards. Now, I still think credit cards are safer to shop with online specifically, but debit cards have now come into play where a lot of banks will give you your money back as well.

Starting point is 00:18:24 when you shop online. Now credit cards are really quick. Visa is absolutely amazing. And when I had my credit cards on, it was a Visa card. They did an amazing job of getting me my money back and ensuring that I had zero liability there. So that's why you want to call your card company as fast as you possibly can so that you can get this information and get your money back. That's the number one thing and our number one goal right away is to get our money back, especially if these transactions are high in. Sometimes they are. But sometimes what fraudulent people will do and you need to look out for this is they'll make small transactions. to see if you notice.

Starting point is 00:18:55 And when they make those small transactions, they're checking A, to see if the card works, and B, to see if you notice and see if you're going to react. Because once you don't notice, all of a sudden, what's happening here is that immediately they can do some large transactions and get away with it in their eyes.

Starting point is 00:19:10 So you've got to make sure that you're checking for that stuff. And if you see even a small transaction that you did not authorize, that may be a sign that somebody has your card information. They're just waiting to use it. So making sure that you do not allow this to happen and call your card issuer immediately is incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:19:27 Now number two, the second thing you need to do, and you should be doing this anyway, is monitor your statements and your credit report. Now, the reason why you want to do both of these is twofold, one of which is when you're monitoring your statement, you're seeing if they are charging that card again and again and again. You want to make sure, A, the credit card company did its job by canceling your card, because typically that's what they're going to do

Starting point is 00:19:49 is they're going to cancel your card in 99% of the situations. Every single time, usually my car, is canceled immediately. So you want to make sure that card is canceled and there's not additional transactions coming through that you're going to have to deal with. But secondly, is also you want to check your statement credits backdated to ensure there wasn't other small transactions going on. But you also want to check your credit reports because usually when they get your information and you become a target, a lot of times they're trying to find all the information they can on you. And if they found your information, say, by hacking into your online files, for example, then maybe they have more

Starting point is 00:20:22 information that you think. So you check your credit report to make sure there's not bank accounts being open in your name or student loans being open in your name that's happened to me before, where I've had a student loan opened in my name, and that was because my identity was stolen. So figuring out how much information they have in monitoring these credit reports is really, really important. Now, you have rights when it comes to this, because there was an act in 1974 called the Fair Credit Billing Act, which means that consumers are protected from unfair billing. So, for example, it allows you to dispute charges if you do not authorize those charges. The FTC website has some fantastic information about this and how this works.

Starting point is 00:20:58 But if for some reason your card issuer is trying to argue with you about this, then you can utilize some of this information to make sure you understand that you can get rid of these charges off of your account as well. Now, number three, the third thing you need to do is you need to change all related passwords and pens. Now, passwords and pens, as you heard in the episode, we talked about how to protect yourself online. passwords and pins are so incredibly powerful and you have to make sure

Starting point is 00:21:23 that you have really difficult passwords to guess. And that's why using a password manager like LastPass or something like that is going to help you in these situations. Now if you want to keep your passwords offline, you want to keep them on a hard drive or something like that, an external hard drive, I completely get it.

Starting point is 00:21:39 I understand it. But for me, for ease of use, I utilize online just because it's easier. Now, what you want to do is change all the passwords and pins on that financial account. So say for example, you bank at Chase, for example. You use the Chase Sapphire as your credit card and all your bank accounts are at Chase.

Starting point is 00:21:55 Well, if you use Chase and your credit card information is stolen, you want to make sure that you change the passwords on everything within that Chase ecosystem. Why? Because you don't know how much information they got and you don't know how they got that information. So making sure you're changing your passwords on your bank accounts and on your credit card accounts is going to be incredibly powerful and changing the pen because they utilize the card.

Starting point is 00:22:16 So you need to change that pin because if they know the pin, and they can keep using that. So never use the same pin on two different cards, never use the same pin for any different website, keep track of it all in one location so that you know where all this is, but don't make it easily guessable, don't make repeating numbers,

Starting point is 00:22:31 all those things that you probably already know. And make the passwords difficult to guess. Now, in addition, there's going to be security questions when you do that. Your security questions, for example, if they ask for your mother's maiden name, it does not have to be your mother's actual maiden name. You can put in some other maiden name.

Starting point is 00:22:47 It doesn't have to be the correct answer. It just needs to be something where they can't figure out what it is because somebody can Google your mother's name and they can find your mother's maiden name online. So making sure that you get that information and use really difficult to guess answers is going to be incredibly powerful for you as well. Now number four, this is a big one,

Starting point is 00:23:04 is you need to notify credit bureaus. And this is a major one because understanding that once you give these credit bureaus your information and tell them, hey, my information was stolen. I want you to set me up on alerts so that I can get these alerts. In addition, you're going to want to freeze your credit as well. So when you notify these credit bureaus, you're going to request the following.

Starting point is 00:23:24 Number one, a fraud alert. So a fraud alert requires lenders to verify your identity before opening any lines of credit whatsoever. So a fraud alert is going to protect you and your identity for any new lines of credit. Number two, you want to issue a credit freeze. Now, credit freezes are the most powerful things that you can do to protect yourself online. Freezing your credit. is something you definitely want to be doing in order to make sure that nobody can open new lines of credit within your name. Now, when you're ready to open a new credit card, for example,

Starting point is 00:23:55 you just unfreeze your credit, and then you open the card. And once the card is open, then you freeze your credit again. So keeping your credit frozen is something that I would definitely recommend every single person listening to this podcast to. It is the best protection for you not to have unauthorized accounts open in your name. It is the absolute best protection. So you call all the major credit bureaus and you say, hey, I want my, my credit frozen. There's steps that we give you in the episode talking about how to protect yourself online. So if you want to hear the step by step, we talk about it in that episode. We'll link that episode up down below so that you can check that out. But once you freeze your

Starting point is 00:24:28 credit, then nobody can open a bank account in your name or a credit card in your name or a student loan in your name, whatever it is. And when you unfreeze it, then you're just opening the line that you want and then freezing it again. You're just protecting yourself. That's what you're absolutely doing. So doing these two things, a fraud alert, making sure you get alerts if anything is trying to be open in your name and a credit freeze will protect you from anything else being open. You're going to be absolutely protected by doing that. Now number five is additional protection. And with this additional protection, it's filing a report with the local authorities. And this is something where in some situations you may want to do it, in some situations you don't

Starting point is 00:25:06 have to do it. If it's a local situation where your card has been swiped, then you may want to do this. And this is not so that they'll catch the person. And this is not always something. that will help you in the short run, but it may help you in the long run if you've been a victim of identity theft. Specifically, if it's someone in that local jurisdiction that gave away your information. A lot of times identity theft can happen in real life, in person. Say, for example, you go sign up for something at a bank and you're giving out your personal information and someone's memorizing your information when they leave, they write it down, they sell it off to a data broker. Well, that's a local situation that the police may be able to help you handle.

Starting point is 00:25:43 So this is just an additional step that if you think, it was a local thing, then maybe you want to go ahead and do that. Now, you can also go to Identitytheft.gov and you can report fraud to the FTC. And when you do that, then this report can also be used by local law enforcement. So that is probably the better route to go is you can go to Identitytheft.gov, fill out the information. We'll link it up down below so that you can check that out. And then you could fill out that report as well to make sure that you're covered when or if this happens to you. Now, one thing I want to note is if this has not, if this has never happened to you and you don't understand how annoying it is for this to happen, or if it's

Starting point is 00:26:20 happened to you and you don't think it's a big deal, you need to go through and figure out what is my online protection plan going to be? Like I said, we have an episode talking exactly about that. I would listen to that episode and utilize and go through those steps so that you have this plan in place. Because once you have it set up, it's somewhat of a set it and forget its system because all these other companies are going to be sending you alerts if anything happens. And you're going to have your credit frozen so that any time you want to open something up, then all you you need to do is unfreeze it and you can open up whatever account you're looking to do. So making sure you put these things into play and then removing your data online.

Starting point is 00:26:55 These are some of the biggest factors that you need to be doing. So using Delete Me, to remove your information online is going to be an incredibly powerful thing and really the first step that you need to take to protect yourself online because once you do that, all your information is starting to be removed. These data brokers don't have your information anymore to sell off to whoever they sell it to. And then what you can do is allow them to continuously be removing. your information so all these data brokers can't continually sell your information. So then what you're doing is you're allowing delete me to handle all that stuff for you,

Starting point is 00:27:24 hours and hours and hours of work so that you don't have to worry about it. So that is by far one of the best things that you can do. And the first thing I would do to put together your online financial protection plan. So listen, I hope you guys learned a ton about what to do if your credit card is stolen. If you guys have any questions about this, make sure you reach out to me on Instagram and TikTok. Would love to help you guys out. I've been through this.

Starting point is 00:27:45 I've been through my identity stolen. both those two things. So that's why I'm so serious about this stuff is because putting this into play, making sure that you guys are protected is my number one goal. Part of wealth is growing it. Part of wealth is preserving it and part of wealth is protecting it. So this is part of that protection plan. You've got to make sure that you're protecting your wealth. And online is the place that you're most susceptible to people actually getting your information. So making sure you have this protection plan and play is what I hope each and every single one of you have and you're putting it into place and working through some of the steps as well. Listen, I truly appreciate each and every

Starting point is 00:28:18 one of you listening to this episode. If you got value out of this episode, make sure to share it with a friend and we will see you on the next episode.

The Personal Finance Podcast - 5 Steps to Take Immediately If Your Credit Card is Stolen!

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