2019-05-01+Kiplingers+Personal+Finance

40 KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCE^ 05/2019

MONEY

medical or insurance providers. If you recently

received treatment but the explanation of ben-

efits seems to differ even a little, don’t write it

off as a mistake. And if you receive mail from

providers you haven’t used, don’t toss it; thieves

may have used your identity to get care.

What to do if you’re a victim: File a police report,

then contact your medical providers and ask

to see a copy of your records. Some institutions

may balk at handing them over if you say they’ve

been compromised with someone else’s medi-

cal data, but the right to request your records

overrules an identity thief’s right to privacy,

says the Federal Trade Commission.

Ask your provider for an “accounting of

disclosures” to have a paper trail of every in-

stitution to which they’ve sent a copy of your

medical records. As you contact providers,

send time-stamped letters explaining your sit-

uation along with a copy of your police report.

If you catch the fraud early, you may be able to

contact the billing department of your provider

and ask to cancel the debt. But if the debt is

passed on to an outside collector, you’ll need to

use the protections offered by the Fair Credit

Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collection Prac-

tices Act—such as the right to an investiga-

tion—to clear things up, according to Pam

Dixon, founder of the World Privacy Forum.

CREDIT AND DEBIT CARD FRAUD

Safeguard your plastic and your account information.

by crooks because gas

stations don’t yet face

liability for counter-

feit-card transactions

at the pump. Starting

in October 2020, gas

stations that haven’t

upgraded to chip ter-

minals at the pump

may incur liability for

such transactions.

Fraudsters are also

going online to steal

payment credentials.

Through a method

called formjacking,

they embed mali-

cious code on retail

websites to grab

customers’ payment

information. Such

fraud affected more

than 4,800 websites

per month last year,

on average, according

to a recent report

from Symantec. Small

and midsize retailers

The problem: The

U.S. transition to

credit and debit cards

equipped with micro-

chips—and payment

terminals that accept

chip transactions—is

reducing fraud on ex-

isting card accounts.

If ID thieves try to

intercept chip trans-

actions, they can’t get

enough usable data

to create counterfeit

cards. Losses from

fraud on existing

card accounts fell

from $8.1 billion in

2017 to $6.5 billion

in 2018, according to

a recent report from

Javelin Strategy &

Research.

But payment ter-

minals at gas pumps,

in particular, are vul-

nerable to “skimming”

of customer card data

are often targets, al-

though well-known

companies such as

British Airways and

Ticketmaster have

been hit, too.

How to avoid it: Don’t

store your card infor-

mation on retail sites

or apps. “I never save

my payment informa-

tion. It takes 10 sec-

onds to type it in,”