I know several people that are hyperparanoid about credit card fraud. Still, isn’t it true most credit card “fraud” isn’t really a stanger taking your cards and running them up? Isn’t most of this fraud actually committed by angry ex-spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends who got a card on the account and then charges a lot of stuff to get back at their ex? Or, a family member who checks the mail regularly getting a hold of a preapproved application and sending it in as opposed to the complete stranger pulling them out of the dumpster?
I’d also imagine the vast majority of other fraud is related to errors or intentional fraud from restaurants/bars when the waiter or bartender alters the receipt to balance out their transactions or to add a higher tip assuming the customer won’t notice the difference.
Why is that not “really” fraud? If an ex-boyfriend uses your credit card without permission, it’s fraud. If a family member steals applies for a credit card in your name, that’s fraud.
I think that this is what the OP is trying to say: He believes that the vast majority of credit card fraud is committed but someone that the card owner knows (i.e. former significant other, dishonest family member or friend, etc.) If this is true, only a small amount of credit card fraud is committed by a criminal who gets your information by steath means. Given this, does it really make sense to be paranoid about keeping your information safe?
I think what the OP is asking is “what % of fraud is perpetrated by family members/SO’s?”. I can’t give you any credit card related cites, but when I was a fraud investigator at a large bank I found that about half of our check forgery cases turned out to be family related. Most common seemed to be grandchild defrauding grandparent. Next would have been child defrauding parent (though I did have one memorable case of father defrauding minor son). Spousal fraud was pretty rare, but single accounts for spouses is still the exception rather than the rule. Ex-spouse forgery was pretty rare as well. The first thing that usually happens when divorce is emminent is the race to the bank to open new accounts.
It was always pretty sad to have to tell gramma that the bank would reimburse the forged funds, but only if she filled out an affidavit of forgery - effectively helping to convict Sonnyboy. Most times the family member just ate the loss.
Well, some dudes “steal” their own credit cards, or claim they 'were lost" or file a false dispute. Those are not fraud (against YOU, it is fraud against the bank). How much that happens, I dunno.
I suppose kids/girlfreinds/boyfreinds and such like making charges on your account, and you realizing that but filing a dispute anyway (without telling the credit-card company that you know the charger was in fact someone you know)that’s again not really fraud for YOU, but it is against the issuer. Again, I don’t know how often that happens.
Of course, maybe the OP is talking about what hajario has said- that the fraud is perpetrated by a “freind” or family member unbeknownst to the cardholder. Thus, most commen attempts at preventing fraud won’t help. Sure- but I doubt if that’s common, maybe as common as house-hold theft by the same group. Anyway, you’d still want to try and prevent strangers from stealing your credit card info or idenity, just as you lock your front door even if it *could * be your own teen-age son stealing your cash out of your purse.
Doesn’t this also ring true for missing children cases? When they put out those huge numbers of how many kids are kidnapped each year it makes you think they’re being grabbed right off the playgrounds by pervs.
In reality are the majority of these numbers spouses who don’t have legal custody of their own kids taking them away from the other parent? Or grandparents or relatives fleeing with the kid because they feel the kid is in a bad household but can’t get the legal system to do anything about it?
Last week, my wife got a call from her credit card company enquiring about $7500 dollars worth of charges made in Ireland. She hasn’t been in Ireland recently. The whole process was as painless as these things can be because the credit card company caught it themselves. I know, it is only one data point, but it is the only one I have personal experience with and it happened just like the paranoid set said it would.
I tend to think it is not rare at all even if there is a parallel set of acquaintance crimes.
It does if you’re a credit card company who’s trying to sell “fraud insurance”.
I got a call from one of my companies a couple of months ago. She told me the service was $49.99 and would “protect” me from fraudulent charges which could run up to thousands of dollars before it was detected.
I said I wasn’t interested. She told me why I really should be.
I politely refused again, and then she asked me a question no other telemarketer has ever posed. “Can you tell me why you’re turning this offer down?”
I suppose the aim is to throw you off balance and make you stammer, “Uhhh, I don’t know” and thus give them another chance to persuade/bully you into buying this insurance.
But I wasn’t thrown as much by the question itself as I was of the presumption in asking it. “Yeah, I can tell you why. Under federal law, I can only be held accountable for fifty dollars in fraudulent charges. Your service costs the same. Exactly what ‘protection’ am I really getting that isn’t already provided for under law?”
Now it was her turn to stammer.
Of course, the credit card companies want you to be paranoid, because it’s *them *who ends up paying for credit card fraud, not the victim of a stolen card. if consumers are ultra-cautious, it might cut down on their fraud rates, and if consumers can be conned into buying “fraud insurance”, they can shift the costs off their shoulders.