Identity Theft

The old number and the phone service was provided by an automated phone answering and forwarding company - not by the telephone company. The automated technology of that phone service includes voice recognition, payment processing via phone, as well as some clever forwarding features.

Whoever now has that phone number is using it to con Credit Union customers into entering their atm account number and pin into the automated phone system!

Online, fraud can show up in many different ways. Here are a few examples of security issues we've dealt with over the past 2 years:

* Spoof Sites: Hackers finding backdoor access to a web site through a site script and installing spoof sites of various financial institutions. These spoof sites would allow them to illegally collect customer financial information.

* Online Check Fraud Scams: This is an unblelievably easy scam - and is as simple as getting the account number and routing information off of one of your paper checks or by giving your bank wire details out. There are several U.S. based companies that will write checks on your bank accounts for anyone who enters your basic account info - NO further ID is required! We experienced over $9,000 worth of these types of online check scams in the past 24 months. On each occasion, the bank processed the funds on those bogus checks. Fortunately, however, the bank always returned those funds to us promptly.

* Fraudulent Sales: We received several thousand dollars in fradulent orders too - paid for with stolen credit cards. Any order we receive that originates from Indonesia, Nigeria or Eastern Europe is automatically ignored - and orders coming in from other countries outside the USA are very carefully scrutinized and confirmed. Be leary of any order that cannot be confirmed with the address verification system of your merchant account system.