Identity Theft and Phishing
December 2005

ID Theft

Identity theft is America's fastest growing crime. Last year alone, more than 9.9 million Americans were victims of identity theft, a crime that cost those victims around $5 billion dollars. Identity theft can involve credit card fraud, Internet fraud, or mail theft, among many other crimes.

Identity theft is a serious crime. It occurs when someone uses your personal information such as your name, social security number, or other identifying information, without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes. Identity thieves may use a variety of methods to obtain your personal information which may include "dumpster diving", stealing your wallet or purse, mail theft, or computer hacking. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years trying to clean up the financial mess that thieves have made of their good name and credit record.

If you think that you have been the victim of identity theft, immediately contact your financial institution! Contact the three credit bureaus and have a fraud alert placed on your accounts. File a police report with your local authority and keep detailed records.

How to Protect Your Personal Information

• Be suspicious if someone contacts you unexpectedly and asks for your personal information. Most legitimate companies and agencies do not operate this way.
• Do not click on links in emails that ask you to provide personal information. To check whether an email or call is really from the company or agency, call the company directly or go to its web site (use a search engine to find it).
• Do not provide personal information (such as Social Security number, account numbers, PINs, passwords, and so on) via phone, email or otherwise unless you initiated the contact with a trusted partner.
• If someone contacts you via phone or email and says you’ve been the victim of fraud, verify the person’s identity, and contact the organization directly before you provide any personal information.
• If you mange any of your financial accounts online, choose passwords that are difficult for others to guess and use a different password for each of your online accounts. Change the password frequently.
• Make sure the Web sites on which you transact business post privacy and security statements. Be sure to review them carefully.
• Do not send sensitive personal or financial information unless it is encrypted on a secure web site. Regular emails are not encrypted. Look for the padlock symbol on the bottom bar of the browser to ensure that the site is running in secure mode before you enter sensitive information.
• Check all your monthly statements to verify all transactions.
• Check your credit report twice a year and examine it thoroughly. This will reveal accounts that have been opened without your knowledge.
• Add a statement to your credit file that prohibits the granting of credit without calling you to confirm the application.
• Record the names, account numbers and customer service numbers of all the cards you carry. This way you will have all the necessary information you need if you have to cancel your cards immediately.
• Make it difficult for thieves to get “identifying information” from your mail and mailbox. Take envelopes containing checks and other sensitive information directly to the post office instead of leaving them in your mailbox.
• Shred or secure in a lockbox all documents with important identifying information on them, such as bank statements, credit card statements, pre-approved credit card offers and pay stubs.
• Carry only the credit card you want to use in an emergency. Do not carry your Social Security card.
• Update your personal computer with security patches and install anti-virus software.

What to Do if You Fall Victim

Contact United 1st and other financial institutions where you conduct your business and alert them to your situation.

If you experience fraudulent activity on your United 1st account, please notify us so we can take the necessary precautions to prevent further activity and then file a police report with your local authorities. Submit a copy of the police report to us and then you will need to complete the necessary documentation in order for us to credit your account for the fraudulent transaction and to determine what other steps may be necessary. In some cases, it may be necessary to close your account and establish a new account to prevent further fraudulent activity.

If you have disclosed sensitive information in a phishing attack, you should also contact all three major credit bureaus and place a fraud alert on your file at each credit bureau, which will help prevent thieves from opening a new account in your name. Below is the contact information for each bureau’s fraud division:

Equifax
800-525-6285
PO Box 740250
Atlanta, Georgia 30374

Experian
888-397-3742
PO Box 1017
Allen, Texas 75013

TransUnion
800-680-7289
PO Box 6790
Fullerton, California 92634

Report all suspicious contacts to the Federal Trade Commission through the Internet at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or by calling 877-IDTHEFT

Where Can You Go For Help?

If you suspect that you’ve given your information to a phisher, it’s important for you to act immediately.

If you inadvertently provided your account numbers, passwords or PINs to a phisher, there are things you can do to protect your financial accounts. For information on how you can put a “fraud alert” on your files at the credit reporting bureaus, and for other advice for ID theft victims, contact the Federal Trade Commission’s ID Theft Clearinghouse by visiting www.consumer.gov/idtheft, or call 877-438-4338.

Even if you didn’t get hooked, you should report any phishing attempts by contacting the National Fraud Information Center/Internet Fraud Watch. Visit www.fraud.org or call 800-876-7060. You should also alert the company the phisher was impersonating, and their local law enforcement agency.

Additional Resources about Phishing and Identity Theft

Phishing
Home of the Anti-Phishing Working Group | www.antiphishing.org
How Not to Get Hooked by a “Phishing” Scam | www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/phishingalrt.htm
Better Business Bureau Phishing Phacts | www.bbb.org/phishing/

Identity Theft
Department of Justice’s Web Resources on Identity Theft and Identity Fraud | www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/idtheft.html
Identity Theft Resources from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse | www.privacyrights.org/identity.htm
Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit organization | www.idtheftcenter.org

Victims’ Resources
Identity Theft Prevention & Survival | www.identitytheft.org
Department of Justice’s Web Resources on Identity Theft and Identity Fraud | www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/idtheft.html
Identity Theft Resource Center | www.idtheftcenter.org
Federal Trade Commission’s ID Theft Clearinghouse | www.consumer.gov/idtheft

Hundreds of consumers have found themselves the victims of an e-mail scam known as “phishing.” It involves high-tech fraudsters who pretend to be a legitimate financial institution or credit card company. Hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet, the fraudsters send out “official-looking” e-mails designed to trick consumers into divulging financial and personal information including as account numbers, passwords, user names, Social Security Numbers, and other sensitive, non-public data.

In most cases, the e-mails claim there is an account problem or warns of a possible account fraud threat. Either way the whole idea is to convince the consumer there is an immediate need to update their financial information. Sometime the e-mail has an e-mail reply link but most often this link is to a forged, on-line form that looks almost like a legitimate one – only the web address has been slightly changed to direct the users to a site containing the forged form.

If you receive e-mail from United 1st Federal Credit Union or any financial institution requesting financial information or any other personal or sensitive data please do the following:

• Treat the e-mail with suspicion.
  
• Do not reply to the e-mail or respond by clicking on a link within the e-mail message. Neither United 1st Federal Credit Union nor any federal financial agency such as the Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Reserve Bank or National Credit Union Administration will never ask you to provide any kind of confidential or financial details via an e-mail request. The same applies to most other financial institutions including credit card companies and banks.
  
• Contact United 1st Federal Credit Union as soon as possible to report the suspicious e-mail. You can reach our Members Services by calling (912) 882-4630 or visiting us on the Internet at www.united1stfcu.org. Also if members believe they have been a victim of a fraudulent scheme or identity theft they may also contact the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov.

Submitting financial or personal information through a website where the member has initiated the contact, such as logging on to our United 1st Federal Credit Union Personal Credit Union Online, is generally safe. But while doing so we suggest members look for the “lock” icon on the browser’s status bar as well as looking to insure that “https” is in the beginning of the website’s address. Both of these indicate that the information being entered is secure during transmission.