Writing Checks Can Be Risky. Here's How To Protect Yourself.
Typewriters vanished, and then cassette tapes and encyclopedias did, too. But paper checks are one piece of our analog past that persists. American consumers and businesses wrote 11.2 billion checks in 2021, far fewer than the 42 billion written at the start of the century. Despite the rapid decline, check fraud is exploding — costing financial institutions billions and throwing many check writers’ finances into disarray. After my colleague Ron Lieber and I wrote about rising check fraud, worrie