Protecting Your Credit Score During the Holidays
With the holiday shopping season about to kick off, it’s important to understand your financial situation before heading to the stores so that you can create a sensible budget. By shopping smartly, you can take steps to make sure your credit score doesn’t suffer for the sake of the season. That way you can remain merry long after the holidays are over.
Know your Score
Your FICO score is the score lenders use most often to determine your creditworthiness. It is a number between 300 and 850 that basically represents the risk lenders incur in loaning you money or extending you credit. Your credit score determines what interest rates you might receive on loans and lines of credit. Higher scores usually mean lower interest rates that save you money. That’s why it’s important to know your score before making significant holiday purchases. Whether your score is high, low, or somewhere in between, knowing how your shopping habits impact your score can help you make wise financial decisions.
Shop Smart
There are a number of steps you can take while shopping this season to protect your credit score during the holiday rush. First, it’s a good idea to set boundaries. If your score is lower than you would like — or even if you want to maintain it — it’s important not to spend outside your means. A good rule of thumb is to try to keep your credit card balances well below 35% of your total credit limits. If you know it’s hard for you to resist buying just "one more thing," try paying with cash. That way, you’ll be more likely to stay within the budget you set. And, as appealing as it can be to save 15% on your holiday purchases, it’s best to avoid retail credit card offers. Opening too many lines of credit can negatively impact your credit score and could ultimately cost you more than you’d save.
Safeguard Your Identity
Becoming a victim of identity theft would not only take the cheer out of the festive season, it could also ruin your credit score. That’s why you need to take special precautions during this busy shopping time to safeguard your identity. It’s a good idea to only bring what you need with you on trips to the mall and make sure that your purse or wallet is safely secured at all times — in a bustling shopping center, your valuables could be stolen when you least expect it, without you even noticing! When making an in-store purchase, be sure the cashier returns your card, and put it away before leaving the store. With simple efforts to keep your head about you despite the holiday rush, you can help thwart the threat of identity theft.
Tips of the Month:
Avoid Phishing Scams this Season
Analysts predict that the occurrence of "phishing" fraud could increase as much as ten-fold over the holidays — particularly during the post-Thanksgiving shopping rush. Phishing involves the fraudulent attempt to collect consumers’ personal information by sending e-mails that appear to be from reputable companies (charities, stores, banks, etc.).
Phishing can also occur through SPAM messages by using enticing offers or bogus attachments. Learn to recognize phishing attempts, and never click a link or download an attachment from a suspicious e-mail. These links or downloads are often the first step in pharming schemes — which aim to redirect a legitimate Web site's traffic to another, bogus Web site. Not clicking on suspicious links or opening suspicious attachments is one of the few steps you can take to protect yourself from phishing and pharming attacks.
Setting Up your Member Center Alerts
If you're a current Equifax Credit Watch™ subscriber, your customizable alerts are a wonderful way to find out about key changes to your credit file, almost as soon as they occur! That way, if an erroneous change is detected, you’re able to act quickly — putting you back in control of your credit!
To access and change your preferences, simply log into the Member Center and scroll down to the "Credit Watch Alerts" section. From here, you can decide what sort of changes to your credit file would result in an alert. For example, you can set up your alerts to notify you if your charge card balance increases by a certain dollar amount or percentage. And, you can choose to be notified if a dormant card suddenly becomes active. You can even choose to receive wireless alerts on your cell phone whenever key changes occur.
Not an Equifax Credit Watch™ subscriber? Enroll today!
This Month’s Poll Question: Economic Conditions
Thank you for helping to make our new monthly poll section a great success with your valuable feedback. We love to hear what interests you and look forward to tailoring future newsletters around your interests.
This month, tell us what worries you most about the current economic situation.* Check out future newsletters to see what other customers thought and what the statistics show.
Previous Poll Results:
In September we asked how often you check your credit report. The results are as follows: 41% of readers checked their report once a year, 30% checked it two to three times, 11% checked it four to six times and 18% checked it more than six times a year.
Checking your credit report only once a year means you might not spot changes that could be the first signs of identity theft. That’s why it’s good to see that over half of our poll responders check their reports more frequently. Keep up the good work and remember that you can stay informed about key changes to your credit file(s) with Equifax Credit Watch™ products.
Look for more results in future newsletters.
Interactive Tool: Tundra Tubbing – the NEW Equifax Holiday Game!
Our cold-weather friends are fed up with the chilly climate. Help warm them up spa-style by tossing the gang into a nice, warm hot tub. Simply click and drag each furry friend to launch it into steamy comfort.
It’s deviously simple. It’s surprisingly difficult. It’s highly addictive. And you can even challenge your friends to beat your top score! Now let’s warm those critters up!
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Equifax and BBB Identity Theft Alerts:
Travelers Beware: Free Wi-Fi Scam Strikes at Airports
In order to keep up in today’s world, travelers need to stay connected, even on the road. Many airports and other public spaces offer free wireless, or Wi-Fi, connections for the public to log onto the Internet from their laptop computers. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) warns that hackers are now taking advantage of this convenience by setting up fake Wi-Fi connections designed to steal your personal information and files without you even knowing. Find out how it works and what you can do to safeguard yourself.
How it works
Although hackers can and have set up fake Wi-Fi connections in a number of venues, usually they will target consumers at airports. When searching for connections, consumers may see a network connection available that could be simply named "Free Wi-Fi." Thinking it’s the free connection offered by the establishment, they’ll log on. Unfortunately, the network may actually be an "ad-hoc" network, or a peer-to-peer connection. The user will be able to surf the Internet, but they’re doing it through the hacker’s computer. And the whole time, the hacker is stealing information like passwords, credit card and bank account numbers, and social security numbers. Beyond simply stealing keystroke information as the user enters various types of data, if the PC is set to share files, the hacker could even steal whole documents from the computer.
Airports across the nation continue to report on Wi-Fi security issues. Officials in Atlanta, New York LaGuardia and Los Angeles airports have all reported the existence of ad-hoc networks advertised as free Wi-Fi connections. An investigation revealed that Chicago O’Hare had 20 ad-hoc networks present that were potentially designed with the intent of hacking into unsuspecting user’s computers and networks.
The BBB offers the following advice on how to keep yourself safe when you go wireless:
- Never connect to an unfamiliar ad-hoc network — even if the name sounds genuine. A hacker can change the name of his network to anything he wants, including the name of the legitimate Internet connection offered by the airport. Just because it has the same name as the Wi-Fi advertised in the airport, don’t believe it.
- Make sure that your computer is not set up to automatically connect to non-preferred networks. Otherwise your computer could automatically connect to the hacker’s network without your knowledge.
- Turn off file sharing when you’re on the road to prevent hackers from stealing entire documents, files and unencrypted e-mail from your computer.
- Create a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for your business. A VPN establishes a private network across the public network by creating a tunnel between the two endpoints so that nobody in between can intercept the data. Many companies allow remote users to connect to corporate networks as long as they use VPN. This keeps the users' communications just as secure as if they were sitting at a desk in the building.
For more information on identity theft, please visit www.bbb.org.
© 2008 by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. Arlington, VA
Used by permission. The name Better Business Bureau is a registered service mark of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc.
