Card Recovery Bulletin

You do not want to see your credit card number on the card recovery bulletin. Also called a "restricted" or "hot" (like a 1930s gangster) card list, the bulletin provides a list of stolen credit card numbers, past due accounts, counterfeit numbers and those that are over their limit.

Originally published by Visa and MasterCard in hard copy, today most merchants use electronic records that are continually updated by all credit card companies. If a credit card number appears on the list, the merchant will be unable to process the transaction. However, this does not help to prevent against identity theft or data breaches. Taking on these threats, credit card companies are fighting back with chip cards, encryption and even biometrics with fingerprint logins on cell phones in order to detect fraudulent credit cards before it's too late.