Phishing Scam Awareness

On a daily basis, thousands of people fall for fraudulent emails, texts, and calls from scammers pretending to be a bank. We refer to these as phishing scams and victims can lose hundreds to thousands of dollars.

Phishing scammers pretend to be from companies you are familiar with or someone you may know. They want you to click on a link or share your personal information such as your social security number or password, this can allow them to steal your identity and/or your money.

 Bait

• Scammers use familiar company names or pretend to be someone you know. They send a text or ‘spoofed’ email or even call you in a way that makes it appear to be from a friend, family member, or an employee of a trusted organization like your bank, credit card company, government agency or phone company.
• The bait may look and sound like a legitimate request. The scammers might even have personal information about you, like your date of birth or password.
• They often say they need your information now, to protect your account, to help a loved one in trouble, or to confirm login or password information and warn that something bad will happen if you do not act immediately. 
• They ask you to give sensitive information like passwords or bank account numbers or they ask you to click on a link. If you click on the link, they can install malicious programs that can lock you out of your computer or enable them to gain access to use your personal or financial information, even from outside of the country.

How to Avoid the Hook

• Take a few minutes to check a request out. You wouldn’t give your key your house to someone you don’t know or trust. Don’t give someone the keys to your bank account before you know who that person is and are certain that person can be trusted.
• If someone calls asking for information or wants you to act, tell the caller you will call back, then call the number on your billing statement or credit card to report the call. If the caller tries to convince you to stay on the phone, it’s a scam. Hang-up and call the trusted number.
• If it’s an email, don’t click on it. Go to the company’s website using a bookmark or type it in and check for alerts on your account.
• If you’re unsure, ask a friend, coworker, family member, or caregiver to help.

Scam Tells

• You don’t have an account with the company.
• The email, text or caller is asking for account information, including passwords.
• Grammatical errors or something just seems fishy or not right.

Protect Yourself

• Keep your computer and mobile device security software up to date and regularly back up your data.
• Change your security settings to enable multi-factor authentication which is a second step to verify who you are, this could be a text with a code or biometrics for accounts that support it.
• Change any compromised passwords right away and do not reuse those passwords for other accounts.
• Don’t provide any information to anyone who calls or emails you out of nowhere. Only do it if you have contacted them first.
• Stay current on scams.