Quote Originally Posted by TommyTree View Post
Very little need to worry about identity theft online if you deal with responsible companies. In most cases, the retailer never even sees your credit card number past the last four digits. Your biggest risk of identity theft is actually when you pay for your meal at a restaurant with one. When the waiter is off processing your payment, you can't see if he's taking a picture of his card or writing down your number, but many people never think about that danger. At fast food restaurants, cashiers have been known, on occasion, to take your credit card at the drive thru and hand you back a credit card with the same design that they stole from a customer the week before. To get your credit card information online, you have to hack the credit card company (since the retail Web sites payment pages are just portals for the CC company), but if you can do that, you can get everybody's card number, not just those who used it online. I'm sure you all feel safer now.
You are right TT, I have no fear of using my credit cards anywhere. There are built in mechanisms for protection.
It's a lot easier to call Visa or American Express and do a fraud claim or charge-back than to fuck around with Paypal and have to jump threw thier 10,000 hoops to get a refund.