Order of the Bath

Here is a suggestion to reduce the risk of credit card fraud.

On the back of your card is a three digit number which is not in the electronic information, either the mag. stripe or the chip. It is only used in online and telephone transactions.

Make a note of this number elsewhere and then erase it from the card—I have scratched mine with a pen-knife and then blacked it over with a pen. It is not easy to completely erase it as it is often indented into the plastic but that doesn’t matter. The aim is to make it difficult to read by cashiers and waiters when they handle the card. A favourite trick is to memorise this number together with the main number easily obtainable from the till and use it in online transactions before you get home.

This entry was posted on 25 Jul 2007 at 09:34 by Rick and is filed under Miscellaneous, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.