Protect Your Credit Over The Holidays

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5 Tips to Protect Your Credit over the Holidays
Credit card fraud, data breaches, and identity theft often seem like only stories in the news that you hear in passing—until it happens to you or someone you know. Cases of these crimes have hit an all-time high, and it seems to get worse as thieves and scammers get more sophisticated, daring, and greedier. Victims are not just large corporations like Neiman Marcus and Michaels or financial institutions such as American Express; individuals lose credit cards, their identities, security numbers, bank balances, passwords, and sensitive personal information at an unprecedented scale today, especially during the holiday season.
Fortunately, credit information is not very difficult to secure. While being a victim to such theft can cost one a life and cause a lifetime of pain and suffering, preventing it is sometimes as simple as constant monitoring of your credit information, e.g. never letting your credit card out of your sight when making payment at the gas station or grocery store. To protect your credit history and identity over the holidays, here is a compilation of the five most important steps you should take right now.

1. Secure your online accounts and devices
Smartphones and tablets certainly make our lives easier—even better. …show more content…

The easiest way to check this is to ensure that the site or sites are verified by TRUSTe or other reputable personal credit and identity management service. Verified sites often have a privacy seal at the bottom of the secure page. It is also recommended that you check that the page’s payment url is secured and starts with “https://” not plain “http://”. When shopping at a physical store, keep a close watch of your credit or debit card, as a thumb rule, never let the card out of your

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