Ask Slashdot: How Can You Keep Your Credit Card Numbers from Being Stolen?

Long-time Slashdot reader olddoc and his wife have three frequently-used credit cards, stored and many online businesses for easy checkout. "In the past 6 months we have received fraud notices from the card companies three times."Typically there is a $1 charge in a far away location. Once there was a charge for thousands of dollars at a bar. The card companies seem to pick up the fact that they are fraudulent even though once it was described as "chip present". What can we do to cut down the number of times we have to update all our ongoing bills with a new card number? The original submission acknowledges that "We have never lost money to fraud, just time." But is the problem storing the card numbers with online businesses? Long-time Slashdot reader Z00L00K argues "Never ever do this. Never ever have your card stored at an online business even if it's more inconvenient to enter it every time. You NEVER know how your number is stored, it can be stored in a database that's not secure enough or it can be stored in an encrypted cookie on your computer in which case that cookie might be read and decrypted by just about any web site out there if they have figured out how to access cookies for another site. There are a lot of ways that your card details can leak." That comment also concedes it's possible someone's using a card-number generator to target the same range of credit card numbers. But is there a better solution? Share your own thoughts in the comments. How can you keep your credit card numbers from being stolen?

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