Why Is it Important to Sign Your Credit Cards and Require Picture ID?
The little plastic card we call electronic money is convenient and safer to carry around than those wads of cash. Or so we thought…Credit card theft and pretexting has become more rampant in the past years. In the United States alone, where majority of the people have at least one credit card, almost 50% of cardholders report that cards were opened in their names, or that their cards were stolen. The signature is an important specimen in validating the ownership of a card. It is also important to show a picture ID (preferably with the same signature) to the cashier for every transaction made. This will help the cashier to further verify the cardholder’s identity. If your signed card is stolen, the card thief will have to forge your signature before he can use it. And since the signature panel is tamper-evident, he will have a difficult time convincing the cashier, that he was a victim of pretexting, when the signature and his picture ID are checked. There are some people, however, who refuse to sign their cards because they think it would be safer. But it’s not really a valid reason because all it would take for the thief to do is sign the card and make a fake ID with the same signature, and then he’s off to his shopping spree! And what’s even worse is that if an unsigned card gets stolen, the cardholder may be held liable for it because he did not affix his signature at the back! Credit card companies have their own reasons for requiring signatures, to avoid pretexting, the same way that cashiers have when they ask for your picture ID’s. Complying with these requirements will save you a lot of trouble and money wasted.
Trilegiant’s Privacy Guard can protect you from identity theft.
Trilegiant’s The National Card Registry can protect you from credit card fraud.
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