Fraud advice

A reader writes in:

There are instances of credit card scams where some baddie gets hold of your CC details and enough of your ID to do a bit of spending on your behalf. There was a cunning one in the news where the baddies rented AirBnB places and used them as delivery addresses – collect the goods (paid for on purloined CC) and move on.

Nothing is perfect but here is how you can limit possible losses.  

Cancel your Visa and replace it with a debit Visa.  Behaves just like a regular Visa except that the card credit limilt is zero – money from a nominated bank account.  Create the account in your Net banking and top it up from time to time with enough money to meet the CC spending. If you want to be truly paranoid, kill Paywave on the debit card.

Baddie gets card and tries to use it. Might work if paywave is active, but card will run out of money if the account has been provisioned sensibly.  Ditto if it is used online.  If paywave is dead then card is no use offline as it will need a PIN.

Might be seen as a hassle for some, but works for me ….