Identity theft is a growing concern for many members. Fraud continues to rise with an alarming increase in amount of losses reported by victims each year. Follow the helpful instructions below to help protect your identity.
What is Phishing, and how can I protect myself? Phishing is a method of identity theft. Typcially a scam artist creates a website that seems to respresent a legitimate copy such as Community First Credit Union. The scam artist then sends you an email or the link to the fraudulent website they created. Visitors to the fraudulent site are prompted to enter personal information such as an account number. The criminals then use the personal information for their own purposes, or sell the information to other criminal parties. Even though these emails look convincing there are ways to protect yourself.
Community First Credit Union will never ask you to provide your financial information via an email. Community First already has all of your financial information on record.
Contact the Community First Call Center or visit any branch location if you receive an email that appears suspicious or a phone call or voice mail requesting you to provide information about your account. Don't devulge any information unless you are absolutely certain the contact was initiated by a legitamate representative of Community First Credit Union.
You will also find an image of a lock by the PC Home Banking login area of our website. If you click on the lock a pop-up message will appear that will provide the address of the website it is protecting. The security lock and the website addresses cannot be duplicated by a hacker. Always make sure that whenever you are on a website that is asking for personal information, that it has a security lock allocated to it.
If you're clicking on a link to take you to our PC Home Banking website, make sure this website shows the security picture you selected. If you do not see your security picture close the window you are viewing and contact our Call Center and a representative will assist you.
What is Vhishing, and how can I protect myself? Vhishing is a voice mail scam where a hacker sends you a text message. These phone call/text messages will ask you to call a number to verify your account information. To protect you from voice mail attacks remember the following.
Community First Credit Union will never leave you a text message asking for your to verify your account information via a text message or a voice mail recording.
If you receive a phone call, text message, or voicemail message requesting personal information and are not positive the call originated from a representative of Community First Credit Union please contact our Call Center.
What do I do if I think I have been a victim of Identity Theft?
