The best way is to shop with local stores in the vicinity, let them know you as a regular…
The other way is simply to pay cash for everything but build up a truthful profile for yourself with the stores, that is just in case so the cops can catch the crooks and ensure your personal safety.
or
Pay by card for regular purchases below a certain amount using a card/account which you can close if required and pay cash for large purchases above a certain amount.
Here is what people do, and why they get scammed/defrauded. They pay cash for small purchases and use their card/bank account(where there is a lot of cash) for large purchases.
How in the past did scammers get your details? Dishonest merchants through whom they did their business…
So if you pay cash then the merchants have to tell the crooks the serial number of the notes you paid and the amount which you paid which means the scammers will ask the merchants to share the proceeds but merchants won’t do that, instead they’ll turn on em’ and expose themselves to legal action for being involved with scammers too… and if it goes the other way then the scammers will rob the merchants and get accosted by cops… Scammers can be remote in other locations behind the screens or also can be the types of merchants who do run a bonafide business but also are on the lookout and in the business of robbing other merchants meaning masquerading and watching who collects how much money so the robber merchant can hire robbers to carry out armed robberies at their behest whether their victim is locally based or based in another country too then the robber merchants share in the proceeds with the robbers. However, in many cases (eventually) the robbers don’t share their loot and make threats on the merchants in which case the merchant reports them to his henchmen or the cops which leads to the gunmen being taken out or accosted by even more heavily armed policemen…
Cash looks like it supports crime but the effect of paying cash is that the merchants don’t want anyone to commit an armed robbery on them so the precautions which they take forces crime levels to remain very low… Crime levels were very low in the USA for decades, why? … Cash is King… but now we got creit cards and computers on which we can use em’, well so can the scammers dot dot dot…