By Sabrina Karl
You’ve heard it before — regularly check your credit report to make sure identity thieves aren’t using your financial information and accounts for their gain and your detriment. But there’s a way to stop some fraudsters in their tracks much sooner than if you wait for your next credit report check.
Once an identity thief has your info, they may take control of one or more of your financial accounts, apply for new credit cards in your name, claim your tax refund, withdraw money from your bank accounts, or sell your information to other identity theft criminals.
The good news is that some of these violations can be detected almost immediately after they take place by making a regular habit of monitoring the transactions leaving your bank and credit card accounts, and simply noticing when something doesn’t look familiar. If you see a transaction that you or an authorized user don’t recall making, it could be a tip-off that someone has gained access to your account, card number, or login credentials.
The optimal precaution would be to check your transactions daily, but establishing a routine to check 2-3 times a week or at least once weekly can be very doable, with just a few minutes’ time, if you use a financial management app, website, or software that automatically downloads all your accounts’ transactions in one place (many of which work well on smartphones). Alternatively, if you don’t have too many accounts, you can login to each one separately to view recent activity.
The big advantage of transaction monitoring is its potential immediacy, because the sooner you can alert your bank or card issuer that you didn’t make a transaction, the sooner they can shut down further access to that account or card to stop the thief from causing more damage.