How Useful & Safe Is Your Credit Card Site?

You would think that the Internet would make it easier for credit card users to monitor and manage their accounts, but judging by some of the complaints we hear, credit card sites are often more confusing than convenient. Important items are often hidden or difficult to access, and some readers complain that many sites simply aren’t user-friendly.

These problems are compounded by safety concerns, because some credit card company Web sites don’t appear to be secure even though they ask you to enter account login information directly on the home page. Fortunately, most credit card sites are relatively straightforward to use once you know what to look for, and the security problems aren’t normally an issue at all—provided you know how to tell whether you’re visiting the credit card company’s real Web site.

Get The Most From Your Credit Card Site

Whether you’re looking to apply for a new credit card or using an existing one, there are plenty of potential pitfalls you’ll want to avoid when setting up an online account. The following five tips will help you get the most out of your card’s services, online or otherwise.

1. Use the site before signing up.

When you get a tempting credit card offer in the mail, the first thing you should do is visit the company’s Web site. This will help you decide if one of the company’s other services is a better fit for your needs (and you can also look for special online-only offers). Better still, exploring the Web site before you commit to a credit card gives you a chance to see how the company’s site works, so you won’t get stuck using an interface you don’t like.

Some handy features to look for include email alerts (which we’ll discuss later); the ability to view payments and pending charges, as well as those that have posted already; and online management of reward points or other incentives. Another nice feature to consider when visiting the company’s Web site is the ability to select from a variety of online payment options. Citi Card holders, for example, can use checkboxes to pay the Current Minimum Payment Due, the Statement Balance In-Full, or choose Other Amount to enter a value manually. The site automatically calculates your minimum payment and current statement balance so you don’t have to dig up your paper forms to make the proper payment.

2. Read the fine print.

This pretty much goes without saying, but the problem with some sites is in finding the small print. It’s important to read the fine print so you don’t unknowingly agree to any terms and so you fully understand what you’re committing to or authorizing when you click buttons or links. Some of the credit card sites we looked at displayed links to important information in extremely small text and put the links in strange places (such as between paragraphs of text instead of at the bottom of the page). If you have a small monitor, or a large monitor that is set to a very high resolution so that text is small to begin with, these types of links are nearly impossible to find. Keep an eye out for colored text (which usually indicates it’s a link) or consider scaling up the text size when you visit the credit card site. To do this in Internet Explorer, for instance, open the View menu, expand the Text Size entry, and click Larger or Largest. Medium is the default setting if you want to switch back afterward.

Finding all of the information we needed at some sites was problematic enough, but reading some of it posed additional challenges. For example, a link to some important disclosures at Capital One’s site (www.capitalone.com) caused a pop-up window to appear containing the text, but the box was a fixed size, and the text was wider than the box. This meant we had to scroll horizontally and vertically to read the text, which was incredibly annoying and inefficient. If you run into problems like this, look for a Print-Friendly link or printer icon to print a hard copy. If that option isn’t available, use the browser’s File menu and click Print (if possible, use Print Preview first to make sure it will print properly). Some pop-up windows don’t include the menu bar, so the File menu is inaccessible. In this case, right-click anywhere within the menu and click Print.

3. Allow time for payments.

A credit card Web site may seem like the perfect way to immediately pay your credit card bill, but don’t wait until the last minute to pay electronically if you haven’t done your homework. Although paying bills online theoretically puts your payment request through immediately, in some cases, it turns out that it’s not much faster than mailing your payment.

Be sure to read the terms when authorizing a payment, because most credit card sites have a cut-off time from when a payment is requested and when the payment will actually post to the account. Sometimes, after a payment is made online, a physical check is then issued by your bank or other financial institution and mailed to the credit card company. If so, there may be a delay between the time the online payment is made and the time the check is actually received by the credit card company that makes the electronic payment even more inefficient (or worse, past due). Check with both the credit card provider and with the bank or financial institution that the payments will come from to see how electronic requests are routed and fulfilled, because in some cases, the payment might get there faster if you write the check yourself and drop it in the mailbox.

4. Take advantage of email services.

If you’re the type of person who checks your email on a daily basis, credit card site email services are a fantastic way to keep tabs on your account. They can tell you when a payment is due or overdue, send confirmation that a payment was received, tell you about special offers, and let you know how many reward points you have and what they can be redeemed for, among other things. Email services are usually opt-in, meaning you’ll need to visit the site and grant permission to the company to send you the emails, so if you aren’t receiving these types of alerts, check the Web site carefully to see if they are offered and to sign up.

5. When in doubt, avoid the Web.

Web sites are sometimes designed—intentionally or otherwise—to make it difficult to get in touch with a real person who can help you with a credit card problem or answer questions. If contact information isn’t readily available on a credit card company’s Web site, use the toll-free number on the back of your card to get in touch with customer service representatives. They generally have the power (or can get authorization) to adjust your rates, remove late payment fees, provide compensation for poor service, and quickly take care of issues with lost or stolen cards.

Are Credit Card Sites Safe?

Savvy Web users know that there are two main ways to tell if a page they’re visiting is secure. One is to look for a locked padlock icon somewhere in the browser window, and the other is to look for “https” instead of “http” at the beginning of the URL in the address bar. If either of these indicators is not displayed, then the page you’re viewing is not secure, and you should think twice about entering personal information (especially passwords or account numbers).

The security of credit card Web sites should be locked down better than Fort Knox. However, many of our readers have pointed out that the home page of most credit card sites is not secure, even though it asks for account name and password on that very page in order to sign in to an account. Is it safe to enter that information? The answer depends on how you got to the credit card site’s home page.

Most credit card sites are designed to attract and inform new customers while catering to the account needs of existing customers, and that’s where this seeming security compromise comes into play. Oftentimes, the home page can’t be secure because if it were, visitors who don’t have an existing credit card with the company wouldn’t be able to access the home page at all. Fortunately, once you enter your account name and password on the home page of a legitimate credit card Web site, that information is encrypted and sent over a secure connection as soon as you click the login button. From that point on, your browser should show the locked padlock icon, and the “https” will appear in the address bar, reassuring you that everything you send and receive during that session is secure.

As long as you are at a legitimate credit card site, there are typically only two ways scammers can get your precious account login information. They can install a keylogger program on your computer that stores every key you press, capturing the password when you enter it on the home page, or they can intercept the encrypted data and try to unscramble it. Some keyloggers are installed remotely via a computer virus, while others are installed locally by someone who has physical access to your PC; either way, this is an extremely rare problem. Capturing and decrypting the data is also extremely unlikely because credit card sites use a type of encryption that is nearly impossible to crack, and credit card thieves have much easier ways to gain credit card numbers. Although you must keep in mind that everything you type on your computer or transmit over the Internet may be monitored, these types of concerns are largely irrelevant to home computer users.

The one thing to avoid at all costs is clicking an emailed Web link that supposedly takes you to a credit card site’s home page instead of typing the site’s address directly into your Web browser. Stay away from links to credit card sites that are contained in emails, because this is the most common avenue of attack that scammers use to get your account information. For example, they prepare an official-looking email telling you there is a problem with your account and urging you to login immediately to update information or otherwise take care of the problem. These emails invariably contain a link that looks legitimate, but by hovering the mouse pointer over the link or examining the source code for the email, it’s usually easy to see that the link points to a site other than the real credit card company’s home page. Clicking the link brings up a site that looks exactly like that of the credit card company, but in reality, it is a clever fake designed to get people to enter their account information. This technique is called phishing, and the cleverest scammers can make it look like the padlock icon is locked when it actually isn’t or even use graphics to cover up a phony address with one that looks legitimate in the browser’s address bar.

If you receive an email claiming to be from your credit card company, don’t click any links or fill out any forms contained in the email. Instead, enter the credit card company’s Web address directly into your browser’s address bar and check your account status online. Many newer Web browsers come with phishing filters that alert you if a site looks suspicious. For instance, this feature is enabled by default in Internet Explorer 7, but if you want to check a site you are visiting, click Tools, expand the Phishing Filter menu, and click Check This Web Site. If you feel that you have encountered a phishing site but Internet Explorer doesn’t flag it as such, click Tools, expand the Phishing Filter menu, and click Report This Website. Select the I Think This Is A Phishing Website checkbox and click Submit to file the report.

If you want to be even safer, forget the phishing filter and call the credit card company using the toll-free number printed on the back of your card. Often, the customer service reps know about scams that are making the rounds and can let you know whether the email you received was legitimate.

Consider The Competition

If your credit card provider’s Web site simply isn’t working out for you, the best thing you can do is look for one that will fulfill your needs and give them your business. Most credit card companies are more than happy to offer zero-interest balance transfers (although you need to be on the lookout for serious interest rate hikes after the trial period).

If you decide to switch credit card companies, use the Internet to compare features but talk to a customer service representative to make the actual switch. He may be able to tell you about other offers that meet your specific needs, and you can also negotiate interest rates, the length of any zero-interest trial periods, reward point transfers, and other aspects of the switch that often can’t be adjusted using the standardized Web sign-up interface. Shopping around pays off, whether you’re buying things with your credit card or signing up for a new one.