In this information age, those with malicious intents hacking into the records of retailers' and stealing personal information about their customers cannot be written off as a one off incident. Such things had happened many times in the past and are happening now as well, and the sad thing about this is that the common can do pretty little to prevent such attacks as the breach happens in the computer system of a different person/organization. Another method employed by the hackers is to breach into the email accounts of personalities, and steal personal information such as credit card numbers and bank account numbers, if anybody has saved any such sensitive info in their inboxes. Hackers usually take the latter route at the beginning of the month when credit card companies around the world sends the previous month's statement into the customers' mail box.

If you, the customer, receives any word from the creditor that any application of credit has been submitted in your name, which actually you haven't filled out, or stumble across any transactions that you have not authorized, or if the collection agency informs you that they are collecting for a fraudulent account in your name, something again you don't know, assume that your credit card has been hacked. Once you are convinced that your credit card account has been compromised, don't hesitate to make the move and set into motion what all you can do to plug the damage, at the earliest. Here are few things you must do to ease the impact in that regard.

The first and foremost damage control step is to inform the creditors or banks about the breach of security, and submit a request to block/cancel the credit card. This will prevent any further misuse of your credit card number by the hacker. Next, contact the credit monitoring agencies and inform them about the possible identity theft. Request them to place a fraud alert on your credit file and specifically ask them to inform you, the customer, before opening any new account against your name or granting credit.

It is also advisable to inform your telephone/cable company that some unscrupulous person is trying to open new accounts in your name, and tell them to contact you before forwarding with any such requests. Closing your existing bank accounts and opening new ones is also a reasonable and safe option. Also, don't forget to file a report with your local police and note down the police case number. When they are finished with their investigations, request a copy of that report and keep it filed for any future reference.

However, irrespective of all these precautions that you can take, still it is possible that a wily hacker may break into your new credit card account and make illegal transactions. In order to avoid such a possibility, ensure that you delete all your monthly statements from your email inbox after taking a printout of the same, remove any stored personal information from the folders, if there is any, and make use of a paper shredder to reduce the credit card statements and receipts to shreds before disposing it into a garbage bag. In most cases, a credit card theft is caused due to the customers' failure to keep the personal details secret. The hacker's hacking skills only comes next.

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