Your Credit Cards Guide

PayPals move into physical retail territory has received plenty of media attention, and for good reason. It is not every day that Visa and MasterCard are challenged in such a direct fashion in their own back yard. And the credit card networks should better take PayPals challenge more seriously this time around than they did a decade ago, when their arrogant oversight allowed eBays payment processor to grow to a huge size in the person-to-person and online payment processing segments of the market right underneath their noses.

The story is nuanced, as even if PayPal does manage to grab any meaningful chunk of the physical point-of-sale (POS) market, about half of its transactions will still be processed on bank cards (the majority of them bearing Visas or MasterCards logo).

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About the only thing nice we can say about the latest Israeli-Palestine conflict is, well, at least they’re not actually shooting at each other.  Instead they’re trying to ruin each other’s credit ratings and deface each other’s Facebook walls.  Yes, it’s war, but war as teenaged geeks fight it.

Recently, we told you about oxOmar, a hacker from the United Arab Emirates working and studying in Mexico who managed to breach two Israeli coupon sites and released about 14,000 account numbers.  The Israeli government responded by saying that they were treating the attack as terrorism, and that they’d hunt down oxOmar.  Meanwhile, in retaliation, a group of Israeli hackers stole and released 400 credit card numbers from Saudi Arabian citizens.

This being the Middle East, everybody sat down like a mature responsible adult and talked it out, while law enforcement on both sides calmly agreed to go after the criminals involved.  Just kidding!  Instead, it’s gotten conflated with the wider political conflict, as hacking attacks have spread and grown men who should know better start getting involved and yelling at each other at length.

Fortunately, those with credit card numbers released are largely safe; the credit card companies involved acted quickly and with foresight, looking at the numbers and informing the account holders, and then taking action.  The problem is really less with the numbers being released and more with the fact that this cyber slapfight is escalating, with more and more hackers from both sides jumping in to find and release the “other side’s” personal data, and politicians refusing to do their jobs.

For example, an Israeli hacker calling himself “Hannibal”, yes, after Hannibal Lecter (remember that we’re dealing with teenagers here), found and uploaded the emails and password for 20,000 Arab Facebook accounts.  In response to that, a group of Palestinian hackers temporarily took down the websites of El Al and the Israeli stock exchange with the encouragement of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip.  This is basically the equivalent of your mayor urging on the local hoods as they smash windows and tear down posters over at the rival high school.

So far, the breaches have been unpleasant, but with few far-reaching real world consequences: mostly it’s been a huge inconvenience to those just trying to live their lives.  But as more people get involved, and more fly off the handle, the risk increases that something dangerous could happen.  For example, some hackers have claimed they’ve breached manufacturing computers tied to parts of the Israeli government.  So these at

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Your credit report can be a tool to help you guard against or discover identity theft. Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information such as your name, Social Security number, or your credit card number to commit fraud. Identity thieves may use your information to open a new credit card account in your name. Then, when they dont pay the bills, the delinquent account is reported on your credit report. Inaccurate or fraudulent information could affect your ability to get credit, insurance, or housing, now or in the future. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years cleaning up the mess the thieves have made of their names and credit records.

When a business sees the alert on your credit report, it must verify your identity before issuing you credit. The business may try to contact you directly, but if youre on deployment, that may be impossible. As a result, the law allows you to use a personal representative to place or remove an alert.

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Dear Erica,

Am I responsible for my late husband’s credit card debt? I told the man from the company that they were not my cards and that my husband has passed away, but they are not taking no for an answer. I never used them, and I honestly did not sign for them. My husband only used them for his plumbing business. If I do have to pay, I don’t know how Im going to do that because Im retired and living on a very fixed income. I am 72 and don’t think I can go back to work in todays economy and my heath. Please help. Miriam

Hi Miriam,

Most likely you are not liable for the debt in question a response that I hope you find at least a little soothing. The only way you might have to take it on is if you live in a state that has community property laws on the books. These are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

In essence, community property means that assets and liabilities that you accumulated during the course of the marriage are to be shared equally among both partners. There

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The number of new credit card offers mailed out to American consumers in 2011 was the highest one since 2007, the Boston Globe tells us, citing data released by Synovate, a market research firm. Card issuers sent out a grand total of four billion credit card mailings last year, three times as many as they did in 2009, we learn.

These new numbers dont come as a surprise, as the perceived improvement in the economy was bound to restore the issuers interest in handing out new credit. What is surprising at least to me, however, is how far some issuers are willing to go in doing so. As weve pointed out before and as the Globe notes, some of these new mailings come with incredibly attractive sign-up incentives. So good are some of them that I dont remember ever before seeing better ones. This exceptionally high quality also prompts the question whether the issuers are really that desperate to sign up new customers or are they forced to be so generous, because we are just not interested in what they have to offer.

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In 2011, there were monumental happenings across the globe: the uprisings across the Arab world, the ending of the war in Iraq, and the death of Steve Jobs, just to name a few. But in the credit card industry, it was mostly business as usual: the card companies searched for revenue streams, the cardholders stressed about paying their balances, and the economy continued to struggle.

However, as we look ahead to 2012, there may be a few events and trends which will have an impact on the way we use credit cards. So here are our predictions for the new year:

 1. We’ll start seeing credit cards that are more secure. In 2011, Visa began the transition from the current magnetic-stripe cards to chip-and-PIN cards. The newer cards contain an embedded computer chip which stores sensitive data and can only be accessed when paired with a customer’s PIN number.

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