Gadgetory

thanks for watching tech quickie click the subscribe button and enable notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos so aren't credit cards great the rewards programs are fantastic you can buy things now and pay for them later and the reasonable interest rates me that I'm just kidding about that last one but obviously there's a huge difference between you using your own credit card irresponsibly and someone else deciding to commit credit card fraud and running up a bunch of charges on your account and these days is often much easier for criminals to forget about stealing hard currency like the Highwaymen of yesteryear and instead focus on ripping off credit card numbers so they can charge as much as they want well up to the victims credit limit anyway but that leads us into another big advantage that credit cards have over cash if your car number gets stolen your credit card company has technological measures in place to detect and put a stop to fraud but how in the world do they do this well perhaps unsurprisingly major payment processors mine huge amounts of data from their card holders and they know a great deal about their spending habits and while that might sound a little creepy in this age where it feels like every smartphone and computer is trying to learn about us it's also a key way that companies like Visa and MasterCard detect fraud you see odds are that you mostly swipe and tap your card in and around the areas where you live work or frequently visit now as you do this your credit card company builds a picture not only of where you spend your money but how much and how frequently so over time they get an idea of whether you're a high roller with money to burn or if you follow grandma's advice and only use plastic in emergencies so if a transaction goes through for far more money than you usually spend or from some faraway locale this will automatically trigger the car company's payment processing system to flag that transaction and market as potentially fraudulent as the odds are that it wasn't you making the purchase however if you've ever done something unusual like drive down to Tijuana one weekend for some dental work you might have had your credit card work just fine well it turns out that your credit card carrier's computers look for patterns that wouldn't be obvious to us mere mortal humans now oftentimes thieves will use stolen credit card numbers to buy something small at first to test the card before moving on to grand theft so a stick of gum followed by a brand new kitchen is going to raise some eyebrows in American Express and some more advanced methods can track the IP addresses of our transactions originated from so if they see a charge tied to an IP address that's been used in the past for fraud you might get a fraud alert on your phone or PC so that you can contact your card issuer and tell them whether you've been scammed and many banks employ similar technologies to protect money that you already have in your bank account in fact if someone drains a ton of money out of your account fraudulently the Bakke generally has to give you that money back as long as you report it quickly enough and since banks don't want to have to foot the bill for theft they definitely have an interest and keep your cash as safe as possible but remember that these systems aren't perfect in fact it's their errors that allow them to continue to improve so keep an eye on your statements and sometimes they can even work too well if you've got a vacation in some exotic place and started using your card without telling the company first it may have ended up accidentally flagging your card when you try to use it to buy a mai tai at some bar in the Caribbean so it's generally considered a good idea to give them a ring before heading out on a big trip now of course with huge credit card companies and banks using machine learning and artificial neural networks to more effectively identify fraud patterns and develop new algorithms for catching it there's a lot of secret sauce that goes into protecting consumers that's kept away from the general public to keep it out of the hands of would-be fraudsters after all I don't think Kevin McAllister left the plans for his booby traps in plain sight for the Wet Bandits to find and speaking of machine learning or just learning in general are you looking to pick up some practical skills then check out Skillshare an online learning community with thousands of classes in business technology design and more a premium membership will give you unlimited access to high-quality classes on must-know topics so you can improve your skills unlock new opportunities and do the work you love and if you're a technology enthusiast like me you'll be sure to enjoy their classes on DSLR photography and HTML Skillshare is also more affordable than most learning platforms out there and annual subscription is less than ten dollars a month and since Skillshare is sponsoring this video the fur 250 people to use the promo link down in the video description we'll get their first two months for just 99 cents you probably have 99 cents buried in your couch cushions right now so yeah go check them out okay guys you know what to do dislike like like for more bad puns check out our other channels comment down below with video suggestions and don't forget to subscribe