Credit card fraud inherently results in a number of charges and payments which have been made fraudulently. These transactions must be resolved in some fashion, especially because the fraudulent nature of payment for most of the transactions means that it is more likely that there is no actual source of money for the charges that have been fraudulently placed on a credit card.

In order to deal with credit card fraud, then, laws had to be clearly set into place in order to determine to where credit card fraud penalties would fall, whether it be upon the victim of the credit card fraud, the merchant who performed transactions with the fraudster, or the credit card company responsible for issuing the card used in the fraudulent purchases.

The obvious target for credit card fraud penalties would be the fraudster him or herself; after all, without the fraudster’s manipulations these penalties would not have been incurred at all. But most of the time, the fraudster will not have the ability to pay the credit card fraud penalties, and therefore this option becomes closed off as a viable route; though the fraudster could still be charged with the penalties, it is very likely that he or she would have incurred so many such penalties from so many different sources that charging him so would essentially be a show, as opposed to any kind of substantive action.

The fraudster will still encounter criminal credit card fraud penalties for his crime, of course, and will find himself still facing a fine and jail time, most likely; but redressing the fraudulent charges of the fraudster will still require different action.

Credit card fraud, then, shows itself as remarkably damaging to all involved parties, in that debt is incurred for which no party should reasonably be held accountable. Nonetheless, however, this debt must be taken care of, and credit card fraud law assigns it primarily to the merchant involved in the fraudulent transactions.

As far as the idea of credit card fraud penalties goes, there is a certain amount of justification between this choice, as the merchant involved in the fraudulent transaction did not have stringent enough security measures to detect the fraudulent credit card; as a result, it is the merchant who should be held liable for the monetary credit card fraud penalties. But it is a very costly thing for merchants to have to deal with such monetary penalties, and in the end, placing these penalties upon merchants may not serve the public terribly well.

The debts left over to be dealt with after a credit card fraud are part of the reason why the crime is considered so seriously, and yet the criminal credit card fraud penalties facing a fraudster do not necessarily seem to match up to the severity of the consequences of credit card fraud. It is this disconnect between the severity of the credit card fraud penalties facing the fraudster himself, and the credit card fraud penalties facing the innocent parties, that most leads to outrage regarding this crime.

Credit card fraud can leave a victim in tremendous, undeserved debt, with an uphill battle to prove that charges accrued by the fraudster were not actually incurred by the victim himself. Fortunately, there are some elements of credit card fraud protection incorporated into law which work to protect victims of credit card fraud from being overly injured.

 

 

Specifically, in America, credit card fraud protection statutes are such that the card holder is very rarely held liable for any large sum of money after being victimized in credit card fraud. At most, you could be held liable for $50 if the physical card is stolen by a thief, and has a chance to use the card before you report it missing. Even this fee is very often waived by credit card companies, as long as you sign an official affidavit affirming that it was not you who purchased whatever charges the thief has incurred on the card's account.

 

 

If the physical card is not stolen, but instead only the credit card information itself is stolen, then you have no liability under federal law. This ensures credit card fraud protection from the kind of credit card fraud perpetrated often through the Internet. 

 

 

If, however, the type of credit card fraud perpetrated involved the opening of a fraudulent, new account, then the matter takes on an entirely different form. The reason for this is that a brand new account is much harder to prove as fraudulent then single charges on an actually legitimate card. Credit card companies will be unlikely to accept proof of fraudulent accounts as well, if only because there have been numerous instances of individuals who open credit accounts, run up a slew of charges, and then attempt to escape paying those fees by claiming that the account is fraudulent.

 

 

This strategy makes the entire issue of credit card fraud protection from fraudulent accounts significantly more complicated, as the credit card company needs to be able to conclusively determine that the victim is not actually attempting to pull a scam on the company him or herself.

 

 

The best way to deal with this type of credit card fraud is to avoid it in the first place, using credit card fraud alerts from monitoring companies to alert you the moment a new account is opened up, so that you can take care of the fraud immediately. If you are able to act as soon as the account opens, you will likely achieve significantly better results than you would if you were only able to act later, after the new credit card was already maxed out.

 

 

Furthermore, sometimes creditors will still come after a victim who is not liable for any of the charges that were fraudulently made with his card. This is because actually enforcing the credit card fraud protection to which a victim is entitled is often not as easy as one would hope. The law is on the side of the victim, however, as credit card fraud protection statutes ensure that the victim does not suffer for the crimes of others.

 

 

The key element here is that it is your responsibility as the cardholder to keep pushing, just as it is technically the responsibility of the credit card companies and government to ensure that you are left unscathed by the criminal actions of others. If you do keep pushing, in the end, your protection will be borne out, as the credit card fraud protection law will be on your side.

The best way to deal with credit card fraud is to avoid fraud from the get-go, because once you have become the victim of credit card fraud, you will encounter vast difficulty in fully escaping from the damage wrought by the fraud. To avoid fraud, then, you should keep in mind certain important principles based around the central concept of reducing the risk of credit card fraud as much as possible.  

 

 

Essentially, the primary principle of protecting yourself from credit card fraud is to protect your personal information to the best of your ability. You avoid fraud in this fashion by ensuring that all documents which might have any amount of significant information in them are properly destroyed before you dispose of them, for example. Shredding utility bills and bank statements will go a long way towards ensuring that your personal information will never be available for use in credit card fraud.

 

 

You will also want to shred any credit card applications that come your way to additionally help avoid fraud. Keeping close track of your actual, physical credit card will help to ensure that you will never become a victim of credit card fraud, as one of the primary sources for such fraud is simply stolen credit cards. This also carries over to simply using your physical credit card; to avoid fraud, you should try to shield the number from view so that people around you can't surreptitiously copy it down.

 

 

Furthermore, you should only carry one or two credit cards on you at a time; carrying more than that is very likely to cause problems, should the cards be stolen. If you ever find the card missing, then you can avoid fraud by quickly alerting the necessary authorities, ensuring that your credit card is shut down before any fraudsters can use it. 

 

 

Online fraud can bypass some of these more physical protective measures, but still, keeping track of your own information and reducing its proliferation is a good strategy to avoid fraud in general. Do not, for instance, give out your credit card information to anything less than a trusted source. Never give it out over the phone, and don't give it out to a request for it over email.

 

 

Finally, avoid online fraud by not giving out your information over non-secure websites (normally, you will be alerted if a website is secure or not, and if you're unsure, don't give out your credit card information). Being careful about to whom and when you give out your credit card number will go a long way towards helping you avoid fraud.

 

 

Simply increasing and maintaining your own awareness of your finances can help out in your struggle to avoid fraud. Keep track of your receipts in a safe place, so that you can check them against your charges later, to make sure everything is correct. Monitoring your own credit card statements closely and promptly, for example, will help you to notice if any strange action occurs, if any transactions do not fit your own records. With such knowledge, you will be able to avoid fraud outright and, if not, at least minimize its damage.