For consumers, bank alerts are a must

There's no denying that using a credit card in today's world can be downright scary sometimes. With all of the fear of scams out there, anyone with a credit or debit account must be able to trust their vendor. CreditCards.com recently released a poll saying fraud alert warnings are on the rise.

Though most of the bank warnings discovered in a survey of 1,000 Americans were from phone calls, the source mentioned other ways these institutions reach out, including texts. Messaging via text is an excellent way to improve communication and combat fraud.

The survey, which Princeton Survey Research Associates International conducted, found that a quarter of Americans received a debit alert of some kind. Even though 37 percent of respondents said that the alerts they received weren't for actual fraud but were just precautionary, this is still be a good sign banks are adapting to the possible danger out there and looking for ways to combat fraud.

"A quarter of Americans said they received a debit alert of some kind."

However, the existence of false or scam fraud alerts is always a problem. For those who can't tell the difference at a glance, it might be easy to click on a bad link when an alert appears to be legitimate.

A recent Google Docs phishing scam was said to trick many by appearing real, as Google said on Twitter. In the case of texts, when fraudsters can mimic actual messages closely, a lot rests on whether or not your financial services firm is optimizing their use of SMS services in their fraud prevention practices. Reeling from a credit crisis or other recent stress could leave a customer looking for bank and financial servicers who takes fraud prevention seriously.