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Consumer Beware: How Emailing Credit Card Information Puts You at Risk

May 26, 2015

Do you need to update your health club billing information? If so, it may be tempting to do this through email; however, this is not necessarily a good idea. While this is an easy solution for ensuring that the health club payment processing is complete, it may leave your information in peril.

Generally speaking, anything that you send through email is going to be able to be seen clearly by any mail server that handles your message during the process. This includes individuals who may have access to the servers. What this means is if you are sending a regular email message with sensitive information – such as your credit card number – there are several points during the transfer process where it could be seen and stolen.

When you send a message via email, you have no real control over who is handling it, the number of copies that are being stored along the way or how long the messages are stored in the mail system.

There are a number of mail services that will automatically encrypt the transmissions that occur between you and the servers; however, once it is transferred to a different mail service, this encryption might be lost. Emails may pass through several different servers before they reach the final destination and your message might become unencrypted in this process.

If you do have an email account compromised, then all the hacker has to do is to scan all of your messages to find the sensitive information you have sent. This is yet another reason to avoid sending your credit card information through email.

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When it comes to health club payment processing, your best bet will be to pay physically at the location or over the phone by calling the service provider. ABC Financial uses Interactive Voice Response (IVR) when handling any billing information. This means you will be inputting your information digitally without having to give your credit card information over to a person. This eliminates any opportunities for your information to be taken. You can feel confident that your information is safe and that your bill is paid.

ABC Financial is PCI Level 1 Compliant; the safety of your information is our priority. The bottom line is that it is essential you avoid sending any sensitive information via email. This includes credit card numbers, social security numbers and any other information that may give hackers access to your personal identity. There is no need to put yourself and your information at risk when you can easily avoid the situation by calling or going into the location to pay your bill.