Four Ways To Stay Safe While Traveling Plan to travel soon? Vacation is the perfect…
Four Ways To Stay Safe While Traveling
Plan to travel soon? Vacation is the perfect opportunity to explore new places and make memories with the people you love most. Before you depart, however, you should take a few steps to secure your possessions, identity, and finances so that you’re able to fully relax and unwind while away. Below are four actions Penn East Federal Credit Union recommends to help stay safe while traveling:
- Safeguard your belongings.
Before traveling, make copies of your travel documents or have them available on your phone. You should also plan to keep your credit card and cash in different places to reduce the risk of losing everything if some belongings are lost or stolen. For large or extremely valuable items, using hotel safes can come in handy as well.
- Secure your home for departure.
To guard against electrical surges or unmonitored leaks, unplug major electronics and turn off your water supply. It’s also a good idea to appoint an extra set of eyes to watch your home while you’re traveling, whether it’s a friend, a house-sitting service and/or a security monitoring system.
- Protect your identity.
Be cautious about your documentation, your electronics, and your credit and debit cards; all of these could be a target for criminals looking to steal your identity. Keep identification documents in a secure place and leave unnecessary items like your social security card or birth certificate at home. Make sure your phones and tablets are all password-protected to prevent unwelcome access, and be wary of putting your personal information on public computers or using public WiFi.
When you can, you should use your credit card instead of your debit card to make purchases since credit cards carry fraud protection. Also, be on the lookout for card skimming, the practice of getting private information about someone’s card during a normal transaction. Skimmers are small devices that can be installed on a card reader, typically at high-traffic places like gas stations or ATMs. Once a credit or debit card is run through the skimmer, its data is extracted and can be used to make a cloned copy. Though it’s difficult to detect a card skimmer, watch out for odd-looking card readers and periodically review your transaction history.
- Prepare for emergencies.
While traveling, even minor injuries can incur expensive hospital costs. Have a travel insurance plan in place just in case. You should also ensure you are up-to-date on all necessary vaccines and recommended medications, and remember to pack first-aid supplies and other items appropriate to your trip like sunscreen and aloe. You can also check what travel notices are in effect for your destination at https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel.
Planning a vacation or traveling out of the country this year? As a security feature to protect your account, transactions from different locations may be blocked. To prevent this from happening to you while you are away, be sure to call Penn East at (570) 342-2720 to let us know when and where you will be traveling.