Serious question - why do you very concerned if your credit card number is stolen? By law, credit cards have > 30 days (I forget the exact amount) of fraud protection as long as you report it. The only downside I can see is the pain of getting a new card. Your money really isn't at risk.

That said, I do agree that security is becoming a major issue in our world.

Yeah there are laws, but you have to catch it, and you have to report it and sometimes you don't realize you've been defrauded until months later. Hackers in my experience don't empty your account out, they charge $30 here, $19.99 here, sign up for this thing for a monthly charge of $9 you didn't realize. My time and stress costs me. And you can lose money.

It's best to just not have to deal with it. My credit card number has been put up for sale twice now, twice. Because I used it at a Target and a Home Depot. Ok, I just don't want to go through that again. I don't care if there are laws, if I use cash, I'll be fine. It's no problem, cash is accepted everywhere. I'm not likely to be mugged where I live and I don't carry a lot of money.

The aggregate pain and aggregate loss of using cash for transactions in a credit-card dominated world is much larger than the concentrated pain of replacing a credit card once a year. I make significantly more than $30 here and $20 there on rewards - on the order of $500+/year

Sign up for Mint, and quickly scan all of your transactions on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. It's a good idea anyway, so that you can easily account and keep track of how well you're doing at saving.

> The aggregate pain and aggregate loss of using cash for transactions in a credit-card dominated world is much larger

I have not found this to be the case.

> Sign up for Mint

I don't intend to increase the available surface area for attacks by giving my credit information to a third party. Nor do I need this kind of a monthly or bi-monthly hassle.

Eh, I don't view it as a hassle - I view it as a progress check. My savings is important to my future, and checking the budgets, etc. helps keep me on track.

Point taken on the attack surface area, that's definitely something I've always been worried about, and I have no counter.

It's a nightmare sometimes to cancel credit cards, especially if you're travelling.

There are some banks that simply won't cancel the card until you visit your local branch. A tricky maneuver when it's 2000 miles away (I don't know if they've changed this now). Likewise, there are things that are hard to find if you use your cards a lot and don't keep detailed receipts on everything you buy. This happened to me when I discovered someone's been deducting a small sum from my card for several months without me noticing as I was overseas. Of course they could only take care of the last charge before cancelling my card.

I have never heard of a credit card that couldn't be cancelled immediately by calling the number on the back of it. That's the whole point -- when a card is stolen, it has to be deactivated on the spot.

What bank would ever require a visit in person to deactivate your current card? That would be insane, since the bank would simply be opening itself up to more losses, since it (and not you) are responsible for fraudulent expenses.

It was actually a credit union. And yes it is crazy, but then so are a lot of their other practices. Also, I was calling them internationally so even though the private questions they asked me verified my identity, it was still an arduous process. The number of times I called to finally get the card cancelled actually made my long distance charges greater than the stolen value ($25).

Like I said, I don't know if they still do this.

Ever had your card cancelled when you're a few thousand miles from the nearest bank branch?

Multiple times. In my experience, they'll Fedex you a new card in just a few days.

That's why it's also a good idea to carry 2-3 cards, since there's always a chance any single one might develop a problem.

Too much hassle when on the road.

If all of the 2-3 cards are used in the same places, they would be equally at risk of a problem.

The only way to manage the risk is to have a card that is rarely used, or cards that are separated by vendor risk.

I have 3 cards from 2 different banks mostly to protect myself from the occasional (usually once a year) physical loss of the card itself.