Credit where credit is due

I got my first credit card in the mid-80s and was immediately surprised by how little security is involved in the typical transaction. You whip out your card, scan it, sign it and walk away from the counter with your six-pack of Bud or gallon of paint. Maybe a clerk asks you for I.D. Maybe she compares your signature with that on your driver's license.

Those are big maybes. Usually, the clerk is busy chatting with her friend at the next register or silently counting the minutes until his shift ends. Osama bin Laden could present a credit card stolen from Bernie Madoff, sign it "Adolf Hitler" and the clerk would hand him his bag of Fritos and say, "Have a nice day."

It was in protest against such sloppy security that in the mid-1980s I started signing credit card receipts with the name of my old shipmate from San Francisco and Newport, Fred Muzer. Not once in the quarter of a century during which I've been doing this has a 7-11 clerk, airline ticket agent or musical instrument dealer (I once bought a $4,000 upright piano in Fred's name) noticed that the only thing my signature has in common with my name is the initials.   

I keep meaning to let my old friend know that I've been on a charge-it-to-Fred shopping spree since 1986. Fred, I know you read this blog now and then, so if you ever get some inexplicable charges on your monthly credit card statements from stores in the Midwest (I'm writing this on a powerful and pricey Mac that "Fred Muzer" bought from a dealer in Fort Wayne, Indiana) don't panic. It's just me and my one-man crusade to improve credit card security. 

Sorry to drag you into this.