5 Credit Card Scams To Watch Out For

It’s an unfortunate fact that there are literally thousands upon thousands of people out there that make their living solely off of scamming unsuspecting people out of their hard-earned money. Worse, the increasing global connectivity has both made these various scams more frequent in number and also much more difficult to track or stop. This means that if you do fall victim to many of these common scams, there may not be much you can do to get your money back. Therefore, you’re basically left having to protect yourself as best as you can. A big part of this means making sure you’re well informed about some of the most common scams since most are fairly easy to spot once you know what to look for. In light of this, here are five of the most credit card scams and how to spot them.

Impersonating Hotel Workers To Get Your Credit Card Details

An increasingly common type of credit card scam has been happening when people stay in hotels. In this situation, you might receive a phone call from a person claiming to work at the front desk of the hotel you’re staying in who informs you that there was a problem processing your credit card and asks you to confirm your credit card details.

Unfortunately, the chances that this person actually works for the hotel are about zero. In fact, hotel staff will generally never ask for credit card information over the phone and especially once you’ve already checked in. Even if there was a problem with your credit card, this is something that the staff would either ask to speak to you about in person or simply wait until checkout to resolve the issue. It may sound obvious, but the fact of the matter is that you should never, ever provide your credit card details over the phone unless you’re absolutely sure that the person you’re speaking to is who they claim to be.

Cryptocurrency Credit Card Scams

The growing popularity of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has many people who know little to nothing about them looking to invest. This is something that many scammers are looking to take advantage of. In most cases, this involves using emails and websites that advertise to potential investors before eventually asking for their credit card details. However, this is a very obvious scam and one of the easiest to spot since absolutely zero legitimate cryptocurrency investing ever takes place via credit card.

Fake Bank Text Messages

Scammers often get hold of people’s names and cell phone numbers and then use this information to try to solicit personal information from their unsuspecting victims. Increasingly, this is taking the form of sending text messages claiming to be from the person’ bank and informing them that they need to reactivate or confirm their credit card details due to suspected fraudulent activity. In most cases, they are given a phone number to call which will then prompt them for the information. If this ever happens or you can any phone call or text claiming to be from your bank or credit card company, the only thing to do is call your bank’s listed number, and again, never give your details out over the phone.

Fake Utility Company Scams

A similar scam involves impersonating a worker at your utility company who calls to inform you that your water or electricity is about to be immediately shut off due for delinquent payments. Of course, there is one way that you can prevent this from happening and that if you give the ‘utility worker’ your credit card details so they can immediately take payment and bring your account up to date. Again, this is a situation where you should automatically know to call your utility company’s listed number to check if there is an issue with your account, which there most likely isn’t.

Fraudulent Rental Listings

Rental scams are incredibly common and have become even more so now that so many apartments and other properties are listed almost exclusively online. In some cases, the scammers will attempt to get you to sign up for ‘exclusive listings’ or pay online ‘application fees.’ If you’re lucky, you might get away with simply losing whatever money you paid in subscription or application fees. Unfortunately, some scammers use these methods or supposed credit check requirements solely as a way to steal your credit card information. Therefore, it is vital that you pay close attention throughout the entire rental process in order to hopefully avoid falling victim to any of the many different scams you may encounter.

No matter how diligent you are, it may not always be possible to prevent identity theft. The fact that your personal details and credit card information are stored in so many different databases means there is always a chance your data could be comprised. In this sense, the best thing you can do is to not make it easy and this means knowing how to avoid all of the most common scams.

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