By NICOLE PEDERSEN-McKINNON
If you like giving the nice checkout chick/chap your autograph to buy groceries, you’ll be hungry come Friday. And be washing dishes at restaurants. And potentially miss the shoe sale of the century.
In just three days, signatures will be switched off on credit and debit cards. You’ll need a PIN – a Personal Identification Number – to complete a purchase.
If you are one of the roughly 1 million Aussies who still use a pen instead of PIN, here’s what you need to do…
1. Contact your issuer now
Get onto your bank or institution today if you don’t have a PIN or can’t for the life of you remember it. They may need to post one out to you so there’s no time to delay.
With any luck, though, your issuer will have an efficient online process that will take a matter of seconds. (Don’t forget any cards that may be buried in your purse for emergencies.)
2. Choose a smart number
You need to pick a PIN that is memorable but not crackable – so don’t be a twit and choose anything consecutive or repetitive. There was recently an Adobe hack of 38 million users that revealed the 20 most popular passwords include 1234 and 1111. Be a lot smarter.
Don’t use anything related to you either; think birthdays, addresses, phone numbers. Anyone could guess these if they knew you or obtained your details. And don’t lift four digits from your card number; this is a gift to a scammer.