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(1) Don't use debit cards. You're much better protected as a consumer when you use a credit card. http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/11/do-debit-cards-and-credit-ca
by tdfx 12y ago
(1) Don't use debit cards. You're much better protected as a consumer when you use a credit card. http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/11/do-debit-cards-and-credit-cards-hav-the-same-protection/ http://www.bbb.org/blog/2013/11/do-debit-cards-and-credit-ca...
(2) Use BillGuard https://www.billguard.com/ https://www.billguard.com/
(3) Review your transactions every week or so via a personal finance tool (I use https://www.mint.com/ https://www.mint.com/)
I don't particularly care if my payment credentials are compromised as it's highly unlikely a fraudulent charge would go unnoticed by me just using the advice above. It's quick, easy to set up, and stuff you really ought to be tracking anyway.
- serve_yay 12y agoAgreed on debit cards. Another way to vet charges is to use something that notifies your phone whenever you make a purchase. Simple bank does this, maybe others too.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoBump for Simple. Anytime an auth occurs, I get a push notification on my phone. Its so simple from a UX standpoint, not sure why other financial services firms (Discover, Amex, etc) don't push something like it out.
- MarkSweep 12y agoThe Amex app on iPhone sends push notifications for changes.
- heywire 12y agoChase also supports this via SMS, email, or push notification.
- toomuchtodo 12y agoThanks! I was unaware of this feature!
- rickyc091 12y agoI can confirm that Amex has this. If you login on the website, you can also get emails / text for each transaction, set thresholds, etc. I've been using this feature for a while now. They also send you weekly statements on your transactions and how much your account has changed from the previous week, etc.
- rogerhoward 12y agoAs others pointed out, AMEX has supported this for a while - I get texted almost instantly with any transactions on my card. I believe their mobile app also supports notifications, but I prefer SMS for this. I only wish my bank (Wells Fargo) supported SMS alerts for transactions - if there's one thing I don't mind getting frequent notifications about, it would be this.
- WestCoastJustin 12y agoOr use cash and forget about all this other stuff ;)
- snarfy 12y agoOh the irony of how using cash is safer these days. You expose yourself to an internet full of thieves using plastic, but with cash it's only to the handful of people you actually cross paths with.
- untothebreach 12y agoOnly if you get the cash via bank teller though. Skimmers make using ATMs risky as well.
- superuser2 12y agoIt's safer than Bitcoin, but still many times less safe than any sane credit card with a no fraud liability policy.
- tericho 12y agoExcept I really like the free trips I get every year from accumulating travel reward points. Not to mention in my experience (personal and through acquaintances) Visa refunds fraudulent transactions immediately and with little to no hassle.
- _delirium 12y agoDepends on where you shop, but some places will give you cash discounts of 3-5%, which is more than most CC rewards pay. Admittedly it's not as widespread.
- pyre 12y agoMost merchant agreements forbid this, IIRC. Credit card companies have a vested interest in the goods being the same price whether cash or credit.
- marveller 12y agoBillguard asks for my online bank username and password, it's a deal breaker for me. Do you really trust them? https://medium.com/@hyphenated/mint-com-and-billguard-are-lying-to-you-6cfda5d4cc14 https://medium.com/@hyphenated/mint-com-and-billguard-are-ly...
- berberous 12y agoBillguard uses Yodlee as a backend, so at the very least I do trust that Billguard only has read-only access. I'm less certain how Yodlee functions -- whether they just scrape data and have full access, or whether they get some sort of read-only token from the financial institution.
- memset 12y agoI am not familiar with Yodlee, but I recently discovered that many banks support OFX [1], which is a format for exchanging financial information. GnuCash has a list of OFX credentials for major banks. [2] In fact, there are tons of OFX open source libraries out there - I had luck with this one recently in Python. [3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange [2] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Setting... [3] https://github.com/captin411/ofxclient https://github.com/captin411/ofxclient
- marveller 12y agoThanks for the references. After some research, I decided to go with YNAB http://www.youneedabudget.com/ http://www.youneedabudget.com/ it has a desktop and mobile apps and uses your dropbox for syncing data.
- raphael_o 12y agoBillGuard indeed has only access to data in a read-only fashion. Yodlee does have a mix of web scrappers as well as data feeds for certain financial institutions. They power different features for banks such as bill payment and others but companies like BillGuard don't have access to these APIs. On its end, Yodlee is heavily regulated. Like a bank and sometimes even more: http://www.yodlee.com/yodlee-security/ http://www.yodlee.com/yodlee-security/
- girvo 12y agoAnd for those that can't get credit cards...? I mean, I agree with you that that's definitely the safest way, but lets not forget that there are a significant portion of the population that have bad or no credit and are stuck with Debit cards at best. What of them?