How funny: the day after I write about password breaches, I learn that one of my credit care numbers has been stolen. Thankfully, though, I was well prepared for this event, and should be back to normal operations very quickly.
Because stolen credit cards are going to happen, the most important thing to do is to regularly monitor your charges. I don’t wait until the end of the month when the statement comes; I download transactions for all of my financial accounts into Quicken every day (you can also use Mint for the same task). This allowed me to see the fraudulent $1,500 charge at BestBuy.com just a day after it happened. I was on the phone immediately to let the card issuer know and cancel the existing card. For cards that are opened in your name without your knowledge, you should be checking your free credit reports at www.annualcreditreport.com. Since you can get one free report a year from each of the three bureaus, I stagger it so I get one report every 4 months.
Canceling the card immediately limited the damage that could be done, saving me from unpleasant surprises if they had run up to my credit limit before I noticed. On another note, this is exactly why I pay for everything with credit cards and not a debit card. With a credit card, none of my money was ever lost: they simply reversed the charges and I will not pay any of them when the statement is due. With a debit card, that money would have been drained from my checking account immediately, and although it’s likely I would have had that money restored, it would have taken longer and in the meantime I would have been left without the cash to pay my bills.
Since I’m going to be getting a new card, I’ll have to fix all of the automatic recurring payments I have on the old card. To make this easy, I long ago created an account diagram that shows all of my financial accounts and recurring bills, and how they are connected to each other. I’m a visual person who takes “diagrams” literally, so I use a free program called Dia to make my diagram, although you could do it easily enough in Word or even a spreadsheet. Putting together a diagram like this is beneficial for more than just stolen credit cards: although nobody wants to think about death or incapacitation, if either does happen your family will appreciate having a clear diagram of your finances so they don’t have to track things down on their own. Just make sure people are aware of it!
Breaches are going to happen, whether they be breaches of passwords or your credit cards. While it’s important to take steps to prevent breaches, it’s even more important to have procedures in place for when they occur to limit damage and get up and running as quickly as possible. Taking an hour to get everything ready today will solve many hours of frustration tomorrow.