Internet and bank cards

You're actually better using a credit card for online purchases over £100 as you then have protection under the Consumer Credit Act. You do not have this protection if paying by debit card. Another safer way to pay is to use intermediary sites such as PayPal as the seller does not see your details. Always look for the padlock symbol on a site you're not familiar with as this means it's a more secure site with encrypted payment details. We keep a credit cad with a low limit specifically for online purchases and clear it off each month so no interest charges.

I use Paypal for as many online transactions as possible. I think the chances of online fraud are actually not that large, providing you re sensible. Three of us in our family have been shopping very regularly online for over 15 years and we have never had any problems. Where our credit cards have been compromised it was through frauds through credit cards being intercepted in the post, over the counter fraud and by random number generation.

You can have as many bank accounts as you like. We currently have 4. His, Hers, House and one linked to a savings account. All are in our joint names.

That is a very good idea.

I thought you could only have one current account? I thought you could have as many as you like (not that I have!); we have a separate one we use overseas

I tried to top up my mobile phone overseas last summer and wasn't able to do it. It was the credit card company not allowing the transaction, although at the time I thought it was the mobile phone company. When we got home I got in touch with the phone company and then the credit card company who had put a block on my account which they then took off. Apparently I should have told them I was going overseas

It should be less easy for staff to get info from cards now, as we can usually put them straight into the scanner without having to hand them to staff first.

We once had a couple of small sums on our credit card statement that were part of a nationwide fraud - they were shown as payments for mobile phone top-ups and we only noticed them because we didn't, then, have one between us! When we reported it, I asked whether this had happened because of my internet shopping, and was told that it was very unlikely, because internet shopping is usually secure. That fraud is more likely to stem from temporary staff at petrol stations or small cafes, etc, passing on details to fraudsters. That was about 10 years ago - whether it still holds true, I don't know.

If you had a separate account for online shopping, with no overdraft facility and only a small amount kept permanently in it, no-one could defraud you of very much, and you could close that account of it was infiltrated.

My mother always thought that too, I am sure she believed that we were money laundering when we had a separate account for paying bills by check or credit card. You can have as many current accounts as you have money to put into them, but some insist that you pay in a minimum per month. You can get round this by direct debits from one to another - send the same cash round and round, if you can manage to do that without having to spend any.

I thought you could only have one current account? I don't do any online shopping because I'm so worried about fraud.

I have done the same as you oldranky, as I do a lot of on line shopping.

That's a good tip, I hadn't realised it before.
As it happens we have no overdraft facilities on our bank accounts, but it's good to know.
I had what I thought was a dodgy transaction last week, and if I'd known this I wouldn't have been so worried.
Turned out OK in the end.