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Guarding: Protect credit data while holiday shopping.

By IVAN PENN, The Consumer's Edge
Published December 15, 2007

While exploring New York City one day during my college years, I fortunately had my uncle looking over my shoulder.

He asked me if I had enough money just before hopping aboard the subway.

I pulled out my wallet to check my cash, and he stopped me: "Don't just pull out your wallet like that," he said. "This is New York."

I've always been a bit more cautious in general since that day, guarding my wallet from potential thieves. But nowadays it seems there's cause for even more care, in particular as we head into the final rush of holiday shopping.

Attorney General Bill McCollum issued a warning this week as he typically does around major events: Beware of technologically savvy crooks and scam artists.

McCollum's admonishment echoed from other quarters days later, including the insurance industry and a consumer organization.

It seems pickpockets and other thieves have learned how to pilfer goods from consumers' wallets without laying a hand on them. Anyone with a camera phone, Internet access and unscrupulous intentions can run away with your money before you have any inkling at all.

What's worse is that during the holiday season, identity theft and other scams often increase. Thefts usually show up about a month after thieves steal consumers' information.

For example, during the fourth quarter of last year, the Attorney General's Office received an averaged of about 41 identity theft complaints a month. In January, it rose to 58.

Overall, Florida ranked fifth in the nation for the volume of identity theft complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission last year.

So my uncle's warning remains perhaps one of the most crucial: whether you're in New York or a suburban shopping mall, a low or high-tech society, guard your wallet.

So here's the edge, from tips offered by McCollum to consumers wrapping up their holiday shopping:

- Beware of people holding cell phones but not making calls. Often, identity thieves use cell phones to take photographs or videos of credit cards or personal information.

- Don't take out credit cards before approaching the register. You will be able to limit the number of people who see the cards' information, and can protect credit numbers from the people nearby.

- Make online purchases through secure Web sites from legitimate and trusted companies.

- Keep billing information private and avoid sharing it via cell phone, particularly in locations where a stranger could overhear and write down the information.

- Keep all receipts together so no one else can pick them up. Destroy receipts before throwing them away.

- Call police if you are a victim of identity theft and ask national credit bureaus to place a fraud alert on their credit report. Keep records of phone calls and follow up in writing with credit bureaus, banks and creditors.

- And call the attorney general's fraud hotline, toll-free, at 1-866-9-NO-SCAM (966-7226) or visit www.myfloridalegal.com, if thieves steal your identity or you have been the victim of a scam.

Ivan Penn can be reached at ipenn@stpimes.com or (727) 892-2332.

[Last modified December 14, 2007, 23:22:56]