Did you know that it was possible to get yourself removed from around ninety five percent of the mailing lists in the United Kingdom, for no charge? The Direct marketing Association can sort this out for you. How about being able to speak to credit reference companies to confirm that the details they hold on you are completely correct and have not been edited? This too is available from as little as five pounds for most agencies.

These are just two ways for you to keep tabs on your personal details and lower the chance that you are a target to fraud. Identity fraud and theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United Kingdom and thankfully our banks seem to be quite upbeat on keeping customers safe from these thieves.

Since chip and pin was introduced into the mainstream the credit card fraud losses have gone down approximately 25%, which is a huge success, but they still totalled a crippling £219 Million. Sadly now that the internet and mail order are the main players for large purchases, these methods of fraud have only grown.

Apparently, most credit card users make it easy for fraud thieves to get hold of their details. A quarter of British residents use the same pin for all card accounts, and a shocking 21% of us will actually give out card pin number away over the phone to fraudsters claiming to be bank staff! Recently a well known survey company found that it costs on average £12 a year more than needed out of bank charges to cover fraud loss for a year.

There are many credit card arrangements now that even advertise with high quality fraid prevention as a min selling point, and it is easy to see why that is important to customers. Other basic but very good ways to save yourself from being an easy target are to check statements properly and not just file them right away, shred any personal information before binning it, use different pin numbers for different cards and pick random numbers for your pins.

If you need a new credit card check out any fraud busting credit cards with the banks. By securing a decent credit cards you lower your risk of being targeted by thieves.