December 5,2006
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What Your Credit Card Company Should Be Doing With Your Security
You may know what you ought to be doing to keep yourself safe from identity and credit theft, but what about your credit card company? Believe it or not, the big companies are not doing all they can to keep you safe, usually because it would cost too much. In a perfect world, your Visa and MasterCard issuers (among others!) would be taking certain steps to safeguard your information and credit. No one company does all these things, but it may behoove you to seek out those who do several, or at least, a few.
Your card company should, per good consumerism:
-Be mailing follow-ups to consumers requesting a new card to make sure it was received.
-Offer you a free copy of your credit report, once annually.
-Put your photograph on all cards to prevent fraudulent use.
-Ensure that several points of ID, both "in-wallet" and "out-of-wallet," are verified by phone before discussing consumer accounts.