Is it safer to send credit card number via unsecured website form or by e-mail? What safer options are there?
Buy a prepaid gift card, such as a MasterCard or Visa gift card. You can find them at the grocery store, a pharmacy, or your local bank. Provide this on their online form. If anyone steals your gift card information, you will have already used the funds for your purchase and there is no further risk to you. Some (most) credit cards have a way to get a one-time use number. If that is an available option for one of your cards, that is probably the way to do the very risky transaction. These numbers can be good for only one purchase, or for multiple purchases with a single vendor. This will limit your exposure because they won't have access to your entire account. Also review your fraud protections with your credit card. With the single use number, it won't matter if you use the electronic form or the email. Just make sure you keep the confirmation email or a screen capture of the form. Here's one option:  Telephone is a lower-tech yet relatively more secure means for transmitting your payment information when a secure web site isn't available. And yet another option:  You could send them an encrypted email, but this would require tools (e.g. GPG), setup (public keys), and expertise on their end which they are unlikely to already have. However, ChrisInEdmonton raised a good point in his comment.  How can you consider them to be a reputable seller when they don't take basic precautions to protect customers' payment information online? The seller may with good faith charge your card the correct amount and deliver the goods that you expect, but how will they protect your credit card information once in their hands?  Would you trust their internal systems if they can't even set up an HTTPS web site? "Most people cannot use pgp/gpg and setting it up would, in order to do that correctly, require voice fingerprint verification. Don't. Just write a word doc and either encrypt it when saving using the ""save as"" function or encrypt it using zip and email that to them. Then call them and tell them the password. Done." "Your biggest risk with a vendor like this is not that your Credit Card Number will be stolen in transit, it is that it will be stolen from the vendor. I agree with @mhoran that using a one-time number is the best plan, provided you have a bank that offers such numbers.  Bank of America calls it ""Shop Safe"" while Citibank calls it ""Virtual Account Numbers"".  I think Discover card has something similar, but less useful, in that they aren't really one-time use, and I think American Express discontinued their service.  AFAIK no one else offers anything like it.  If you can't get a one-time number, then I was going to suggest buying a Visa gift card, until I put together the fact that you are making a purchase in Asia and the gift cards are not authorized for international payments (due to PATRIOT act restrictions).  Visa does offer the V.me service which might help, but I doubt your vendor participates (or would even be allowed to participate) if they don't offer a secure order form.  You can open a pre-paid Visa card account, which is probably what I'd do. You can buy pre-paid Visa cards the same way you buy Visa gift cards, the difference being you have to register the pre-paid cards (thanks, PATRIOT act) before you can use them.  But it's not that big a deal to register one, you just fill out the online form your your SSN etc and you're good to go. Load it up with enough money to cover your purchase and the FX fees and then cut it up."
This can mean a few things to me.  Some of which has been mentioned already. It can mean one (or all) of the following to me: You take out a new credit card and transfer ALL other credit balances to it. (Only good if you destroy the others, this is a 0% offer, AND you plan on paying this card off furiously.) You do the loan thing mentioned earlier. You go to a credit consolidation service who will handle your paying your payments and you send them one payment each month.  (Highly discourage using them.  A majority of them are shady, and won't get do what they say they will do.  Check Better Business Bureau if you find yourself considering them as an option.) In the first two cases, you are just reducing the number of hands reaching into your bank account.  But keep in mind, doing this is not the same as paying off debt.  You can't borrow your way out.  You can do this as part of your plan, but do so CAREFULLY. Can he use an existing credit card in his name for all his business expenses, or does that pierce the corporate veil? That would be a question to a lawyer, since there's no definitive answer but rather circumstantial. Generally it is safer to separate the finances completely than to try and guess what the court would rule if it comes to that. It is not hard to get a separate card for a LLC (especially if it is a sole proprietorship). We are going to buy a house soon, so I don't want any extra inquiries. I guess it depends on the bank and the type of card. My Citi business card doesn't show up on my personal credit report. The cold caller is just a different way to contact you compared to the junk mail that they send. The business  gets information from the credit rating companies for households that meet a specific set of criteria. It could be town, age, home ownership, low credit utilization...Or the exact opposite depending on what they are selling. Some business do sell your data. Grocery store know who buys certain products: parents buying diapers may want to start saving for college; ones buying acne medicine may want to talk about lower rates for car insurance.  When they call via phone they have a different success rate compared to junk mail, but for that business that may be acceptable for their needs. To boil down what mgkrebbs said: Yes, you should send back the form, provided that it doesn't ask for any more information than address, current telephone number, and email address.  Don't ever, ever provide any bank account information. Nor social security number unless you're absolutely positive of the validity of the requestor. Phishing via regular mail is very rare.  It's way expensive compared to email, which is basically free, plus the U.S. Postal Service takes mail fraud fairly seriously (and has the legal statutes to prosecute).   So: don't obsess; send the form back. I would keep the letter in a file for follow-up, and I would do what you are already planning to do and wait to see what shows up on the credit report. If this does reflect an identity theft attempt, chances are that others will follow, so vigilance is key here. If there is a hard credit check, then you can dispute that on your credit report. If there is not a hard credit check, there is nothing further this credit card company can do to help you anyway. I don't think there's anything to worry about.  TFS doesn't really care who's paying, as long as the loan is being paid as agreed.  Of course you're helping your dad's credit history and not your own, but I doubt TFS would give back money just because it came from your bank account. A business may claim a payment wasn't made against the loan, but you'd have the records that you did in fact pay (keep those bank statements).  In theory they could sue you, in practice you'd send them the proof and they'd investigate and find the misplaced money.  THAT does happen sometimes; the wrong account is credited.  If it did end up in court, again you'd win because you have proof you sent payments.  Even if you put the wrong loan account number to pay to, you'd have proof you in fact sent the money.   If you're talking about something like a loan shark... they can do whatever they like.  They won't sue you though, because again you'd have proof.  That's why they'd use violence.  But probably a loan shark wouldn't falsely claim you didn't pay if you did, as word would get out and the loan shark would lose business.  And again, as long as they get what's agreed to, they don't care how they get it or who they get it from. Some businesses verify the shipping address with the credit card company, and refuse to ship to an alternate address without additional, offline verification.  Of course, this is only useful for physical goods. The truth is that Visa does not require a merchant to enter the cvv number before authorizing a transaction.  The only information that is really needed is the credit card number and expiration date.