Identity theft is a serious problem today that affects many people when they travel abroad. It is easy to see why: when you travel, you tend to use your credit card at many different locations and everyone can usually tell that you're from out of town. For that reason, you may want to take additional steps to protect yourself.
Use Cash When Possible
Don't carry a lot of cash on you, but use cash when you can. A good traveler's tip is to take traveler's checks in increments of $100 with you and to break a new one at a bank whenever you need cash. This gives you the accessibility of cash but the security of a traveler's check, in the event that your items are lost or stolen. Using cash is an ideal way to avoid identity theft but it can be dangerous in certain locations.
Try to Use Third Party Merchants
Today, there are many places where you can pay with third party payment processors such as Google Wallet, Dwolla and PayPal. This is useful because you avoid giving out your actual credit card information. As an additional bonus, you can usually reverse these transactions quite easily if someone does charge you for something that you didn't purchase.
Avoid Merchants That Use Hard Copies
In some areas, merchants will still use hard copies of credit cards. What does this mean? They place your credit card in a machine and they take an imprint of your entire card. They then send this imprint in for processing later. This is incredibly dangerous because it means a copy of your credit card is floating around. If you run into a merchant that does this, just move on to the next.
Call Your Credit Card Company When Your Trip is Over
Make sure that you all your credit company or bank when your trip is over. Why? To tell them that you're no longer in the location that you were in. Credit card companies can flag transactions based on location. This will let your credit card company red flag any transactions that occur in the country or state you were visiting after you have already left.
