These days, for all practical purposes, you are your financial information. All it takes for anyone to seem to be you is to have some information that only you have. With that information in hand, they can apply for credit card accounts as you, obtain loans or mortgages, and spend money like never before. By what means do crooks access vital personal information? In many cases, all they do is ask for it.

In a current credit card scam that is currently popular, criminals are calling credit card customers and pretending to be employees of their credit card company. It's easy to get someone's charge card number, but to engage in Internet transactions, you will additionally need a number from the card. That is a number known as the CVC2 number, which is a three digit number that is printed only on the back of the card. The number is not printed on the billing statement or anywhere else. Growing numbers of online shops request this number as proof that the customer is the actual cardholder. If someone should possess your credit card number and the CVC2 number, they can go on a practically unlimited shopping holiday and all of the bills will come to you.

The scam is performed by a crook who calls you and identifies himself as a representative of your credit card company. He says that he is calling you because of some unusual financial transactions on your account. He describes some unusual purchases that he knows you did not make, and you confirm that you did not make those purchases. He assures you that he will clear up any problems and deduct the charges from your account. He then asks you for the number from the card to "prove" that you truly have it. If you give him the security number, you have been scammed.

Consumers are frequently quite trusting, and if someone calls and says they are from the charge card company, a lot of cardholders will believe them, particularly if they have your full name and charge card card number. Remember that no lender or creditor will ever ask you to provide personal information that they already have. You are the account holder on the account, so your issuing bank does not care if you actually have the card or not. That means that they have no reason at all to ask you for identifying information from the card itself. If you give out this personal information, it may cost you a great deal of money.






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