See How To Keep Your Debit Card Safe From Thieves

“There’s already a lot of breaches related to the target
breach that aren’t being disclosed,” Gartner
analyst,AvivahLitan, says there is roughly an 80 per cent
chance another big data breach like the target mess will
occur in the future, according to http://
business.time.com.
It is especially frustrating because the big fixes to
improve security are not the kind of thing ordinary
consumers can do, aside from calling your bank and
asking for a new card (if you have not been issued one
already). Although EMV (chip and PIN cards) are more
secure and used pretty much everywhere in the world,
experts say it will take months if not years to switch our
infrastructure.
In the meantime, we are stuck with outdated technology
that leaves our cards vulnerable. While you can’t
eliminate it, financial security experts say there are a few
steps you can take to at least cut down on your risk.
These include:
Use credit if you can: Credit cards have two big
advantages over debit cards when it comes to fraud.
“You don’t have the same protection you have got with a
credit card, and your bank account is at risk,” says Scott
Dueweke, senior associate in the virtual identity and
anonymous payments division of Booz Allen Hamilton.
The other issue is that there is a much shorter window of
time (just two days!) for cardholders to report a
suspicious transaction made on a debit card versus a
credit card before their liability climbs. (And if you wait
more than 60 days, you can be left holding the bag
entirely.)
Sign instead of keying in your PIN: Opt for signature over
PIN transactions with your debit card. Merchants would
prefer that you use your PIN because it is cheaper for
them, which is why most payment terminals are set up
with a PIN prompt as a default, but it is riskier because it
gives data thieves the option of creating a fake debit card
and hitting the ATM to take out your money.
Keep watching your statements: Monitoring your
statements for any unfamiliar activity is basic advice, but
let’s be honest, many of us don’t, maybe figuring if our
information was compromised, we would have found out
by now. But if you shopped at the supermarket during the
period when the breach occurred and you haven’t been
issued a new card, keep a super-close eye on your
account activity at least through to the end of the month,
Dueweke says.
Criminals who steal batches of payment card information
usually sell it right away, and those buyers tend to use
those numbers as soon as possible. But in this case, the
breach was so big that there is a veritable bumper crop of
stolen card data floating around the black market. In
other words, it could take a little while for the bad guys to
get around to yours.
Disable automatic transfers to linked accounts: Many
banks offer customers the option of linking a savings
account or line of credit to their current account, with an
automatic transfer of funds if a transaction will trigger an
overdraft. (There’s usually a fee for this, so most banks
charge for overdrafts.) If your debit card is used by
thieves, this means they can wipe out both of your
accounts, so consider temporarily disabling this function.
Use more and better passwords:“These database
breaches often include online username and passwords,
and if you are one of the 55 per cent of all consumers
who use the same username and password for all of your
online relationships, then a data breach at a retailer can
also result in the bad guys getting access to your online
banking accounts,” says Julie Conroy, a research director
at the Aite Group, a consulting company.
Compounding the problem, most of us still use really
lame passwords: SplashData, a company that makes
tools to help people manage their passwords, put
together a list of 2013’s worst passwords. No-brainers
like “123456,” “password” and “qwerty” were among the
top five. “Even passwords with common substitutions
like “dr4mat1c” can be vulnerable to attackers’
increasingly sophisticated technology,” the company
warns.
Set up account alerts: Most banks let customers set up
alerts, generally sent via email or text, that tell customers
if certain types of transactions are made. “The alert
parameters are often configurable, so consumers can
choose to be alerted on what is truly out of pattern for
them, and not have to put up with a lot of noise,” Conroy
says. You can set a naira amount or a geographic range
as a trigger to receive an alert, for instance.