What could be the harm in sharing my American Express statements online?
"American Express is great for this use case -- they have two user roles ""Account Agent"" and ""Account Manager"" which allow you to designate logins to review your account details or act on your behalf to pay bills or request service. This scheme is designed for exactly what you are doing and offers you more security and less hassle. More details here." "If someone gains access to these data, he could use social engineering approach to impersonate you - i.e. call the American Express and ask tell he he is you and he lost the access to the account and he needs the access to be reset and sent to certain email, and if they doubt it's you he would send them the statement data, even on company letterhead (which he would be able to fake since he has the data from the statements, and AE has no idea how the authentic letterhead looks like). He could also do the opposite trick - like calling your assistant or even yourself and saying something like ""I'm from American Express, calling about the transaction at this-and-this date and this-and-this time, this amount, please confirm you are {your name} and your address is {your address}, I need to confirm something"" - which would make it appear as he is really from AE since he knows all these details - and then ask you some detail he's missing ""for security"" - like your birth date or last digits of SSID or anything like that - and then use these details to impersonate you to AE.  So putting all this info together where it can be accessed by strangers does have risks. It may not work out if both you and AE personnel are vigilant and follow instructions to the letter, but we know it not always so." Call me overly paranoid, but letting unknown people know your charges and your personal information is asking for trouble. They know who you are and how to find you and how much money you typically make. If they are decent people - okay, but otherwise they have good ground for comitting a crime against you - blackmail you, con you, target thieves on you, steal your identity, anything else which you won't like if it happens. And it has noting to do with being from Philippines - disonest people are everywhere. Crimes happen all the time, just the less you expose yourself the less likely a crime will be committed against you. My suggestion would be to share as little financial and personal data as possible, especially to share as little actual money figures as possible. Also see this question. "As a person who has had several part time assistants in the past I will offer you a simple piece of advise that should apply regardless of what country the assistant is located. If you have an assistant, personal or business, virtual or otherwise, and you don't trust that person with this type of information, get a different assistant.  An assistant is someone who is supposed to make your life easier by off loading work. Modifying your records before sending them every month sounds like you are creating more work for yourself not less. Either take the leap of faith to trust your assistant or go somewhere else.  An assistant that you feel you have to edit crucial information from is less than useful. That being said, there is no fundamental reason to believe that an operation in the Philippines or anywhere else is any more or less trustworthy than an operation in your native country. However, what is at issue is the legal framework around your relationship and in particular your recourse if something goes wrong.  If you and your virtual assistant are both located in the US you would have an easier time collecting damages should something go wrong.  I suggest you evaluate your level of comfort for risk vs. cost.  If you feel that the risk is too high to use an overseas service versus the savings, then find someone in the states to do this work.  Depending on your needs and comfort you might want to seek out a CPA or other licensed/bonded professional.  Yes the cost might be higher however you might find that it is worth it for your own piece of mind. As a side note you might even consider finding a local part-time assistant. This can often be more useful than a virtual assistant and may not cost as much as you think. If you can live without someone being bonded.  (or are willing to pay for the bonding fee) yourself,  depending on your market and needs you may be able to find an existing highly qualified EA or other person that wants some after hours work.   If you are in a college town, finance, accounting or legal majors make great assistants.  They will usually work a couple hours a week for ""beer money"", they have flexible schedules and are glad to have something pertinent to their degree to put on their resume when they graduate.  Just be prepared to replace them every few years as they move on to real jobs."
"This is most likely protecting Square's relationship with Visa/Mastercard/AMEX/etc. Credit card companies typically charge their customers a much higher interest rate with no grace period on cash advances (withdrawals made from an ATM using a credit card). If you use Square to generate something that looks like a ""merchandise transaction"" but instead just hand over a wad of banknotes, you're forcing the credit card company to apply their cheaper ""purchases"" interest rate on the transaction, plus award any applicable cashback offers†, etc. Square would absolutely profit off of this, but since it would result in less revenue for the partner credit card companies, that would quickly sour the relationship and could even result in them terminating their agreements with Square altogether. † This is the kind of activity they are trying to prevent:  1. Bill yourself $5,000 for ""merchandise"", but instead give yourself cash.  2. Earn 1.5% cashback ($75).  3. Use $4,925 of the cash and a $75 statement credit to pay your credit card statement.  4. Pocket the difference.  5. Repeat. Note, the fees involved probably negate any potential gain shown in this example, but I'm sure with enough creative thinking someone would figure out a way to game the system if it wasn't expressly forbidden in the terms of service" If you go to a grocery store and purchase retail gift cards along with other products, and you pay with a credit card, your credit card company generally does not know what you spent the money on; they don't get an itemized receipt.* If this is the case with your rewards card, then yes, you would get the cashback reward on the gift cards, because all the credit card company knows is that you spent $100 at the grocery store; they don't know (or care, really) that $50 of it was for an Olive Garden gift card. This, of course, should be fairly easy to test.  Buy the gift card, wait for your statement, and see if they included the purchase when calculating your rewards. * Note: I don't have an American Express card, but from some quick googling I see that it is possible that American Express does actually receive itemized billing details on your purchases from some merchants.  If your grocery store is sending this data to AmEx, it is possible that the gift cards could be excluded from rewards.  But again, I suggest you just test it out and see. That all makes sense, but all of those things are the responsibility of the cardholder.  If you want to pay off your balance, anything quoted would obviously not include any transaction yet to post.  The problem is a creditor refusing to give the balance AND refusing to take a payment for an amount over the previous statement balance. This is essentially forcing the customer to pay more interest after they declare their intent to pay the full amount.  Good points, but I don't believe those were factors in this case. You seem overly fixated on dead tree documentation of purchases.  They are deducting this from your account monthly - the mere fact that the money was taken is enough to prove in court that they have you on their books and to hold them to paying out said insurance.  The email copies is actually a better way to organize receipts in most cases (can't be destroyed as easily, etc.) You can cancel the insurance - but don't just stop paying (you'd owe them money then).  I foresee increasing difficulty navigating the 21st century for you unless you can get past this concern about physical receipts.  I doubt other companies would do much better. FWIW, I live in the continental US.  I don't know how different the Philippines is with regard to moving everything to digital Do you need it? It doesn't sound like it - you seem to be able to manage with just the cards you have.  Will it hurt anything? Probably not either, unless it entices you to spend more than you make.  Another downside might be that you would spend more than you normally would just to have activity on every card. So all in all, I don't see much upside. "Others have already commented on the impact of anything which dissuades merchants from raising possible breaches, so I won't dwell on that. Maybe we need stronger legislation, maybe we don't, but it doesn't change today's answer. Often it works the other way around to what you might expect - rather than the merchant noticing and notifying Visa/MC/others, Visa/MC/others spot patterns of suspicious activity (example 1). I don't have any data on the relative numbers of who is being notified/notifying between merchants and payment processors, but at the point when your card is identified as compromised there's no reason to suppose that an individual merchant in the traditional sense has been compromised, let alone identified. In fact because there's a fast moving investigation it could even be a false alarm that led to your card getting cancelled. Conversely it could be a hugely complex multinational investigation which would be jeopardised. It's simply not safe to assume that simply ""brand X"" has been compromised, therefore everything ""brand X"" knows about you is also compromised: Furthermore there's no reason to assume the merchant has even admitted to, or discovered the root cause. MC/Visa/Banks, at the point at which they're cancelling cards simply can't say (at least not in a way that might expensively backfire involving lots of lawyers) because the standard of proof needed to go on record blaming someone is simply not yet met. So: yes it's common that you aren't told anything for all of the above reasons. And of course if you really want to find out more you may have some success with your local data protection legislation and formally make a subject access request (or local equivalent) to see what that brings back. Be sure to do it in writing, to the official address of both mastercard and your bank." There are a couple of things to consider.   First, in order to avoid interest charges you generally just need to pay the statement balance before the statement due date.  This is your grace period.  You don't need to monitor your activity every day and send immediate payments.  If you're being really tight with money, you can actually make a little profit by letting your cash sit in an interest bearing account before you pay your credit card before the due date. Second, credit card interest rates are pretty terrible, and prescribed minimum payments are comically low.  If you buy furniture using your credit card you will pay some interest, be sure to pay way more than the minimum payment.  You should avoid carrying a balance on a credit card.  At 20% interest the approximate monthly interest charge on $1,000 is $16.67. Third, if you carry a balance on your credit card you lose the interest grace period (the first point above) on new charges.  If you buy your couch, and carry the balance, when you buy a soda at 7-11, the soda begins to accrue interest immediately.  If you decide to carry a balance on a credit card, stop using that card for new charges.  It generally takes two consecutive billing period full balance payments to restore the grace period. Fourth, to answer your question, using a credit card to carry a balance has no impact on your score.  Make your payments on time, don't exceed your limits, keep your utilization reasonable.  The credit agencies have no idea if you're carrying a balance or how much interest you're paying. To Appease the people who think point four needs more words: Your credit report contains your limit, your reported balance (generally your statement balance), and approximate minimum payment.  There is no indication related to whether or not the balance contains a carried balance and/or accrued interest.  The mere fact of carrying a balance will not impact your credit score because the credit reporting bureaus don't know you're carrying a balance.  Paying interest doesn't help or hurt your score.  Obviously if your carried balance and interest charges push your utilization up that will impact your score because of the increased utilization. Make your payments on time, don't exceed your limits, keep your utilization reasonable and your score will be fine. I would behave exactly as I would expect it from others. If you were the one giving away too many points by accident you would be thankful if somebody notifies you about this error. You can write a letter or call them. I would not use the points (of course only not use the points which are added in error). Other options are possible but I would advise against them. It's just about fair play and the points are clearly not yours. My bank will let me download credit card transactions directly into a personal finance program, and by assigning categories to stores I can get at least a rough overview of that sidd of things, and then adjust categories/splits when needed. Ditto checks. Most of my spending is covered by those. Doesn't help with cash transactions, though; if I want to capture those accurately I need to save receipts. There are ocr products which claim to help capture those; haven't tried them. Currently, since my spending is fairly stable, I'm mostly leaving those as unknown; that wouldn't work for you. I don't use debit cards, but if I did I would review that portion of the statement. I look at my credit card statements pretty closely, and probably catch one or two mistakes or things I want to question every year. 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. Close your card, now. Let your credit card provider / bank know about the situation. Never, ever ever, give out your password. Not to a friend, not to your bank and not even to your cat. The only people who should know my online bank password are me & my spouse. Forget it, I won't share that sensitive information with any other company. I might as well give a blank check! Besides, don't banks require people to keep their username & password & PIN private? I signed an agreement to that effect, I think!  So even if I did find the online services compelling enough to try, I would want to check with my own bank first & ask them if it's OK to give my password to somebody else. I wonder what they would say to that!! "The link you originally included had an affiliate code included (now removed). It is likely that your ""friend"" suggested the site to you because there is something in it for your ""friend"" if you sign up with their link. Seek independent financial advice, not from somebody trying to earn a commission off you. Don't trust everything you read online – again, the advice may be biased.  Many of the online ""reviews"" for Regal Assets look like excuses to post affiliate links. A handful of the highly-ranked (by Google Search) ""reviews"" about this company even obscure their links to this company using HTTP redirects. Whenever I see this practice in a ""review"" for a web site, I have to ask if it is to try and appear more independent by hiding the affiliation? Gold and other precious metal commodities can be part of a diversified portfolio, a small part with some value as a hedge, but IMHO it isn't prudent to put all your eggs in that basket. Look up the benefits of diversification.  It isn't hard to find compelling evidence in favor of the practice.  You should also look up the benefits of low-fee passively-managed index funds. A self-directed IRA with a reputable broker can give you access to a wide selection of low-fee funds, not just a single risky asset class." You have little chance of getting it deleted. I have the same situation, I closed mine in 2006, and the login still works. Keep the paperwork that you closed it (or print a PDF of the site showing so), and forget about it. If someone is trying to cheat, re-opening it should be the same difficulty as making a new one in your name, so it is not really an additional risk. You could also set the username and password both to a long random string, and not keep them. That soft-forces you to never login again. Note that it will also stay on your credit record for some years (but that's not a bad thing, as it is not in default; in the contrary). The only negative is that if you apply for credit, you might be ashamed of people seeing you ever having had a Sears or Macy's card or so.