15 Worst Things to Carry in Your Wallet

2.  Multiple credit cards and credit card receipts. Choose one credit card and one debit card you use most, and leave the others at home. Multiple credit cards are a gold mine for criminals. They can easily charge items online or send runners to different stores.

3.  Checkbook, or even one blank check. The days when you might need one for a purchase are mostly past.

4. Work ID card. This will have your name and other identifying information that could be used for a targeted phishing (spear-phishing) campaign to perpetrate a scam within your workplace.  

5. Passport or passport card. These are gold to criminals. As the U.S. State Department notes, “The U.S. passport is considered to be the most valuable identity document in the world. It can be used to provide proof of U.S. citizenship and allows its bearer access to virtually every country in the world.”

6. List of your passwords. If your passwords are stolen, the criminal has the keys to your accounts.

7. Gift card not fully redeemed. There’s no stopping a thief from using those funds, which are essentially like cash.

8. Birth certificate. This essential piece of paper contains enough information for a criminal to create fake accounts in your name and access your own accounts. It’s considered a “breeder” document, which means it can be used to obtain other sensitive documents and information related to you.

9. Library card. It sounds benign, but a criminal can always check out lots of books and sell them for a buck or two apiece, warns ​Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence for Trend Micro, a global cybersecurity firm.

10. House key. Thieves could find your address from the contents of a stolen wallet.

11.  Legal paperwork. Don’t carry any legal documents in your wallet or purse that you don’t need that day. It sounds obvious, but Nofgizer says, “We’ve had reports on the [AARP Fraud Watch Network] Helpline where people had their wallets or purses stolen, and their divorce documents were included.” That means the thief has your sensitive financial data, children’s birthdates and other personal information. 

12. Checks made out to you. You don’t just want to keep your own checks at home. If criminals get their hands on a check you’ve received, they can forge your signature and cash it, Nofziger notes. Consider depositing your check using your bank’s smartphone app.

13. Your PIN. It’s bad enough to lose your credit card: You don’t want to give them the key to your account, says Frank McKenna, chief fraud strategist at the fraud detection company Point Predictive. “You would be surprised at how many times people told me they wrote their PINs on the back of the credit cards so they would not forget them.”

14.  Your cryptocurrency seed phrase or recovery phrase. As with passwords or PINs, some people might keep the seed phrase (a sequence of 12 or 24 words that a crypto investor needs to access or recover cryptocurrency on blockchains or crypto wallets) in their actual wallets, notes McKenna. Criminals can use it to wipe out your wealth.

15. Receipts. Don’t carry around those store and restaurant receipts, says Steve Weisman, an attorney and fraud expert who writes about scams on scamicide.com. “Even though your full credit card number won’t be shown on the receipt, an industrious identity thief can use the last five digits to construct legitimate-appearing emails that seem to come from your credit card company or a company that you do business with,” he says. Their goal? To get you to provide them with the full number.​

Only carry your Medicare card when you must

To help protect your identity, your Medicare card no longer carries your Social Security number. But your Medicare number — unique to you — should be closely guarded and never shared with anyone who contacts you out of the blue by phone, email or text or in person.

Only carry your Medicare card when you are headed to an appointment that might require it. In the wrong hands, your Medicare number may be used for a variety of scams, including filing for false claims and reimbursement. If someone calls and asks for your information or money or threatens to cancel your benefits, report it immediately to 800-633-4227 (800-MEDICARE) or online.

Show your Medicare card to your doctor, hospital or other health care provider when you get services. If you have a Medicare drug plan or supplemental coverage, carry that plan card with you, too.

If you join a Medicare Advantage plan or another Medicare health plan, you’ll use your plan’s card to get services, not your Medicare card. You’ll only need to access your Medicare card if you switch plans or return to original Medicare. 

If the worst happens and your wallet is stolen, AARP suggests following these steps.​ ​

Synthetic identities: A growing threat​

Less is more when it comes to what’s in your wallet because criminals have begun creating synthetic identities, where they combine real and fake information to create a new fictional identity. It’s a fast-growing form of fraud that’s made easier these days with the assistance of AI tools.

Here’s how they operate:

• Any information that a criminal finds or steals from a wallet can be used to create synthetic identities. The criminals exploit personally identifiable information, such as a Social Security number — often from children or older adults — as well as an address or phone number of one or more people.
• They combine this information with fake information to build a new identity, making synthetic identity fraud difficult to detect. Criminals will often “incubate” identity information and upload and sell it on the dark web, hard-to-access portions of the internet where illicit transactions can occur. Then it can be used by another criminal to perpetrate fraud.