With all the scams going on in the world
today, it can sometimes be hard to determine what is legitimate and what is
not. The purpose of this page is to keep you, the member, updated on scams
that are currently happening. Unfortunately, there are too many scams
going on to keep up with all of them. If you have more questions, please
contact the Credit Union.
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DEFINITIONS OF COMMON TYPES OF SCAMS
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Phishing - the act of
send an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate
enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private
information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs
the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal
information, such as passwords, and credit card, social security, and bank
account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web
site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user's information.
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Smishing - is a type of
phishing attack where mobile phone users receive text messages containing a
Web site hyperlink, which, if clicked would download a Trojan horse virus to
the mobile phone.
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Vishing - The telephone
equivalent of phishing. Vishing is the act of using the telephone in
an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will
be used for identity theft. The scammer usually pretends to be a
legitimate business, and fools the victim into thinking he or she will
profit.
-
Pharming - similar in
nature to e-mail phishing, pharming seeks to obtain personal or private
(usually financial related) information through domain spoofing.
Rather than being spammed with malicious and mischievous e-mail requests for
you to visit spoof Web sites which appear legitimate, pharming
"poisons" a DNS server by infusing false information into the DNS
server, resulting in a user's request being redirected elsewhere. Your
browser, however, will show you are at the correct Web site, which makes
pharming a bit more serious and more difficult to detect. Phishing
attempts to scam people on at a time with an e-mail while pharming allows
the scammers to target large groups of people at one time through domain
spoofing.
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*DECU will never ask you for your
credit union account number, password, or pin number via e-mail*
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