It is time to start tracking what your credit report is saying.
Watch out credit card owners! There is a new kind of fraud that constitutes 20 percent of all fraudulent credit card losses. This is the infamous “new account fraud” which is difficult for consumers to detect and fight. The new account fraud is the opening of new credit cards and other accounts using the victim’s name and may include other personal information.
But this does not mean that other forms of credit fraud are out of the picture. Having an unauthorized charge on your credit card is still a popular method for swindlers.. Al Pascual, director of fraud and security for Javelin, states that fraud is shifting to a more damaging kind of fraud for consumers. While losses from unauthorized buying or withdrawals on existing accounts declined from 14 billion to 12 billion last year, frauds from creating new accounts without the knowledge of the user increased by $ 1 billion.
Amidst the heightened efforts to protect consumers from credit card fraud, this is alarming because those who became victims of new account fraud suffer more than the typical fraud victims. For instance, they spend three times the usual bill and have out-of-pocket costs which can be five times higher.
