According to a report published in the New York Times, 4 billion dollars are annually swept away by the frauds in the telephone industry and the most detectable in the midst of the frauds are calling card number theft.

Although the new technology is quite promising to tap the reinventing industry of scams but it is postulated that the biggest harness is definitely the cautious attitude of users of calling cards. In order to act vigilantly one must know the deceptive means of vandals and by following the simple cautions one can easily dodge the cheating.

Memorize Your Calling Card number

Though inconvenient to most of people but it is very useful tact to counter the usual neglect in handling the calling cards as people often forget their calling cards at the site of phone booths furthermore retrieving card from the wallet gives crook an opportunity to steal the card number by highly infamous “shoulder surfing”.

Beware Of people around booth

While making a call beware of people wandering purposelessly around the stall, usually the cheats stroll around the phone kiosk equipped with a pencil and paper and secretly record the authorization number or memorize the serial. It is stressed to completely hide the keypad and calling card while punching the serial.

Exercise extra caution during operator assisted calls

The biggest blunders are often committed aloud and its very true in the case of operator assisted calls, crooks record the number as you recite the numbers to confirm. To avoid eavesdropping, you should try to speak normally and directly into the mouthpiece.

Never share your calling card number

It is good to help others but it is not sensible to share your calling card number with others. Maintain the confidentiality of your calling card number as you guard your credit cards, the only difference between the calling card and visa card is your thinking, and otherwise both are worthy.

Don’t be fooled By “Telephone Security Officer”

Never disclose your calling card number to anyone and even the notorious “Telephone security officer”. People under the sham charm of activation of new services fall for the trick but end up in a loss, bear in mind all such calls are hoax even if they give you a callback number.

Never use calling card number to Verify identification

Calling card numbers are not your fingerprints, pupils or your addresses so don’t use your calling card number to identify yourself, keep it confidential.

Use toll restriction

You can avoid the loss in case of stolen card number by using the toll restriction facility; the company will block the calls to certain area codes and thereby compromises the chance of stolen card number abuse.

Report lost Or stolen card number

It is not always a fruitless job to report your stolen or lost calling card, different calling card companies offer a customer care facility incase of lost or stolen calling card number.