This is pretty worrisome, and quite stupid. I like to travel, and never before thought about such an unexpected, potentially ruinous problem. Here's a free ide

This is pretty worrisome, and quite stupid. I like to travel, and never before thought about such an unexpected, potentially ruinous problem. Here's a free idea, which is probably pretty stupid, to which I've given exactly 0.2s of thought: Launch a service that validates travel legitimacy through credit card networks. Basically, a transparent and near-instant check that simply asks the CC networks if an account owner is traveling in location X. My card providers always know when I'm traveling, and are quite intelligent about making sure my card always works. When going out of state/country for any length of time exceeding a weekend to an unusual place, I always tell my card providers. Otherwise, they tend to be pretty good at figuring it out when I don't.