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Fending Off Fraud

Financial fraud protection requires diligence — know the red flags to look for.

Learn How to Fend Off Fraud

Read these articles to learn about the latest scams and safety measures to protect your accounts from financial fraud.

All Budgeting and Goals Credit: Score and More Family Finances Fending Off Fraud Paying Off Debt Personal Finance 101 Homeownership Retirement
Image for tile. Lock It Up: Protect Your Login Info These days an increasing number of people are online creating accounts for shopping, streaming services, or to stay connected with other people. Of course, with all those accounts on various websites, who wants to create a different username and password every time? Well, it turns out the extra effort is worth it. Having different logins for your online shopping or subscription accounts can reduce your risk of fraud. Here’s why: if you use the same username and password across multiple sites and one of them is compromised, access to the other sites is automatically at risk. Fraudsters will then use the stolen credentials on those other sites to see if they can gain access and attempt various forms of fraud or other data mining activity. Please note: First Bank has several protective measures in place to ensure that your information is secure and that your account is safe from this type of fraud. But your other online accounts may not be so well guarded. Here are some tips to help you make each of your log-ins stronger and more secure: Use different login information. Not surprisingly, this is the best thing you can do to keep fraudsters out of your retail or subscription accounts. This means you will need to resist using your favorite username or password over and over again because it is the easiest to remember. Create strong/unique usernames and passwords. When using different usernames and passwords, use information that is not easily identifiable, but something you can remember. The more complex, the less likely it is to be guessed. One more tip: use numbers, capital letters, and special characters throughout your username or password, not just at the beginning or end. Enable two-factor/multi-factor authentication where available. By enabling this feature, a user is provided a second form of identification to verify a log in attempt. Think of it as a second layer of protection against potential attackers. This can be as simple as receiving a code via text or email, or clicking a link to confirm a log in from an unfamiliar device. Keep second factor information confidential. Never give out your second factor code to anyone – even if they say they are from a favorite 3 min read
Father kiddo due work from home. New to Working From Home? Here’s How to Do It Safely To help mitigate the threat of COVID-19, businesses and employees are finding themselves taking part in the biggest “work from home” experiment ever tried. If you are one of those business owners or employees, here are some security tips to help protect you and your data while you work in your home office. 3 min read
Image for tile. Have You Heard of Smishing? It Sounds Ridiculous, But It’s a Real Threat Over the past year, there has been a huge increase in scammers using text messages to pose as banking institutions alerting you to possible fraud. This has been a wide-spread issue that has affected the banking industry, but we wanted to address it directly to make sure you have the tips and resources you need to stay safe. 4 min read
Image for tile. Why Having the Latest is the Greatest: Update Your Browser Today We’ve got a secret weapon in the fight against the fraudsters who are trying to steal the data off your computer or mobile phone: having an up-to-date web browser. 2 min read
Pencil laying on 1040 tax form Staying Safe from Tax Scams We received the following very handy and timely article from the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) in regards to staying safe during this season of numbers crunching and record keeping for taxes. As always, if you have any specific tax questions, be sure to consult a tax prep professional. Watch out for these scams Unfortunately, much of your personal information can be gathered from multiple locations online with almost no verification that the right person is receiving the information. Criminals know this and use the information to file a fake tax refund request! If a criminal files a tax return in your name before you do, they will file it with false information to get a large refund, forcing you to go through the arduous process of proving that you did not file the return and subsequently correcting the return. Once they have your personal information, criminals can continue to commit identity theft well beyond the tax season. Another favorite technique used by criminals during the tax season is sending phishing messages indicating that a new copy of your tax form(s) is available. These emails often impersonate state, local, tribal, and territorial government comptroller or IT departments. If you fill out or attempt to login into the phishing website, the criminals will be able to see your login name and password, which they can then use to try and compromise your other accounts. The more information they gather from you, the easier it is for them to use the information to file a fake tax return in your name. Lastly, tax fraudsters also impersonate the IRS and other tax officials to threaten taxpayers with penalties if they do not make an immediate payment. It is important to remember: The IRS will not initiate contact about payment with taxpayers by phone, email, text messages, or social media without sending an official letter in the mail first. The IRS will not call to demand immediate payment over the phone using a specific payment method such as a debit/credit card, a prepaid card, a gift card, or a wire transfer. The IRS will not threaten to immediately notify local police or other law-enforcement agencies to have you arrested for not paying. 4 min read
lock and credit card Equifax Breach: FAQs and Resources A collection of helpful tips and FAQs in the wake of the Equifax breach. 3 min read
Image for tile. Hold That Line: Protect Yourself from Credit Card Fraud We asked our skilled team of fraud detection experts in the BankCard department for the best steps to follow if you receive an unexpected but somewhat convincing call about fraud on your card. 2 min read
Image for tile. 7 Tips to Help You Protect Your Identity To help protect you from fraudsters, we’ve compiled this list of handy tips. 4 min read

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