Identity/Credit Card Thefts

Ever have your identity stolen by a thief who used your bank account, credit cards or some other financial account. It happened to me once when I drove from New Orleans and paid for a hotel room in Wyoming. My plan was to pay cash for every motel where I stopped to sleep, and I did at all except the Wyoming hotel. It seems they wouldn't let me pay with cash for...get this...security reasons. They wanted security that i would pay of I damaged the room and yet one of their employees stole card numbers (including mine) that day.

I didn't find out someone tried to use my credit card until more than a week later when Jane and I went shopping for furniture for her part of the house. When I tried to pay with my credit card I was told the account had been closed because of expected fraud. That kind of stolen credit card used at a business has been the most common way people have been victims of identity theft. But now, I have read that "experts' in identity theft say that travelers are especially vulnerable because they increasingly rely on electronic devices that easily can be lost or hacked.

It's good news for me, since I do not use those electronic devices, and bad news for most others who do. Credant Technologies, a data-protection company, found that travelers have lost 11,000 mobile devices at the busiest U.S. airports this year, 37.5% of them laptops and 37.2% tablets or smart phones. So carelessness (stupidity) in using those electronic devices makes it even easier for thieves to use them for their own wants.

As in my credit card theft experience, the hotel is the most common theft site. Supposedly, 38% occurred at hotels or resorts. It is claimed that today, you are 15 times more likely to have your identity stolen than to have your car broken into. The two devices that give the thieves their most common theft avenues are unsecured wireless networks at hotels, airports and other public places and the those (dumb) smart phones. Never ever use a Wi Fi at an airport. There are plenty of identity theft thieves waiting for you to so just that. The problem of course, is that most people are so addicted to their technology they are incapable of thinking rationally when using it.

But the reality is that if you take the appropriate precautions, you reduce your risk dramatically because the criminals will move to someone who is more careless than you. Wanna bet against me that I think most people are too addicted to do that?