May 4, 2007

We Recently Returned From Vacation - You May Be Surprised At The First Thing We Did When We Got Home

By Dana Joseph

We recently went on a long vacation and took a 10-day trip to visit family in another state. Along the way we stayed in lots of hotels, took in some local attractions, and made purchases at restaurants and other businesses. Most of our purchases were placed on our visa card (we will pay it off in full when the bill arrives) along with paying cash. On occasion we used our debit card in established businesses like Wal-Mart. So when we returned home the first thing we did was turn on the computer and sign in to our bank account. Why? To check our accounts for fraudalent activity.

Since we were using our visa card a lot, we wanted to be sure that everything that was charged to our account was initiated by us (i.e. that our account had not been compromised). After verifying the charges to our visa card, we verified our checking account as well, making sure that all debit charges were correct. We will continue to monitor our accounts closely. We do our banking with a local credit union and in the past they have called us to verify charges on our account. However, we aren’t going to rely strictly on their identity theft preventions; we intend to be pro-active as possible.

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