You are the second google hit for “why should i cut up my canceled credit card” :)

But I also found this:

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-tips-on-closing-accounts-1267.php
“It is important to cut up closed credit card accounts by cutting through the account number. This prevents someone else from stealing your credit card and reopening the account.”

So there’s another prospective shenanigan. I guess if they get enough information about you they could call customer service and try to reopen the account. I think that’s probably unlikely in the case of fraud, but maybe possible if you canceled an account for other reasons.

I’d also like to note that cutting through the numbers is a bad idea – it’s possible to guess numbers if you only have half, so cutting through the numbers makes it easier to reconstruct the card number, not harder.

I think I agree with you that there’s no logical reason to cut up the card if the account is closed for fraud. However, I don’t think I could feel right about throwing it in the trash whole. It’s a superstitious feeling.

All good points! I think in my initial scenario wasn’t as well thought out as I’d thought it was to match my “why shred” question. It shoulda been something like:

1. Attacker Foo steals your card number, not the card.
2. You notice fraudulent charges, cancel your card, throwing away you’re card and don’t cut it up
3. Attacker Bar, unrelated to Foo, digs through your trash finds uncut card AND that you have a recurring charge with vendor, say t-mobile.
4. Attacker Bar takes your card and buys gift cards at t-mobile which goes through the same grace period accepted charge route, despite card being canceled.
5. Profit!

Still a bit far fetched. I think Bar in this cause could do a lot more damage by, say, opening your mail with your credit card statements. Much easier and less stinky than digging through your trash.

So, sorry, there’s some semantic hassle going on with the phrase “steal your card”.

If the attacker only stole your card number, then there’s nothing that shredding your physical card will do to prevent them from doing more stuff with the stolen number (assuming there’s anything they can do with the stolen number)

If the attacker stole your physical card, then there’s nothing for you to cut up.

It’s possible that there are some shenanigans that could be done with a physical card even after it’s been canceled that can’t be done with just the card number, but
* I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence/description of such potential shenanigans
* In some cases, a physical card can be created from a stolen card number (maybe CCV is also required here)

I don’t see how the grace period shenanigan described above is relevant to the discussion.

Does the attacker need to have a physical card in order the buy the gift cards in this scenario?

Can’t the attacker create a physical card since they already have your card info? Maybe if the attacker only has card number and not CCV there’s something there?

And if the attacker stole the physical card in step 1. above, you’ve got nothing to shred…

1. Attacker steals your card
2. You notice, cancel your card
3. Attacker somehow (digs through trash?) finds out you have a recurring charge with vendor, say t-mobile.
4. Attacker takes your card and buys gift cards at t-mobile which goes through the same grace period accepted charge route, despite card being canceled.
5. Profit!

However, I also can’t find anything on google to confirm that.