Fraud is not a nice thing to experience, especially people that register accounts, loans, credit cards etc. on your name.

To make matter worse you will have to clear up the mess and probably have to pay money to clear your name and credit rating. Then we can add emotional trauma that you got to recover from if this happens to you, your friends or family.

How can you protect yourself against credit card fraud or identity theft?

There are ways that you can implement in your life that will help you to minimise the risk of identity theft. You will have to use your common sense and make it very difficult for fraudsters that want to con you. If you make things hard for a thief then he or she will rather go for a much easier target.

1. Stay up to date and make yourself aware of fraud scams and schemes that go around. Do research on websites and find out what is popular now.
2. A popular scam is phishing - How it works is that you get an e-mail that looks as if it came from your bank. The e-mail will request you the account holder with a link that you will have to click on to take you to the supposedly bank login page. Here you will have to enter your banking details and verify some of your personal details. So the moment you log in to your bank account with your details the thieves steal your information and will use it to clear out your bank account if you are sleeping. To avoid this happen to you is to not click on the links even if it say it is from your bank.
3. Ask your bank to enable mobile notify on your account so whenever a transaction takes place you will get a text (sms) message on your cellphone.

Don't allow strangers to help you at the ATM banks or give your card to strangers

ATM fraud is increasing all the time and fraudsters will do or use any means necessary to steal from you. Nowadays ATM machines are getting blown up by thieves to get to the money.

Sometimes scammers put something sticky in the bank card slot in the ATM and you think that it is stucked or the machine swallowed it. Remember thieves might watch you type your pin number by using video cameras etc by the ATM. So they can rob you and take card if they have your pin or they can even threaten you with a weapon to give it to them.

Using your credit card online

With the boom of the internet and technology advancement with e-commerce it is important to make sure if you buy products or services online that it is a secure site with "https://" in domain name.

Don't give your credit details to any website.

Make sure you shop at a reputable company online.