Fraud can come from an email, a text message or phone call. Criminals and scammers use “Phishing” or “Smishing” as a way to try and capture or “catch” your financial information and passwords. Typically, they will contact you with a phone call, e-mail or instant message and pose to be your financial institution. Often the story is something is wrong with your account, or some of your financial data has been lost. They lie and tell you that to correct the problem you must divulge sensitive pieces of information such as usernames, passwords or account numbers. Some may try to get you to divulge this information over the phone or some may direct you to an authentic looking website where you enter usernames, passwords or account numbers. They use this fake website, whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate institution, to capture your sensitive information. Others operate by persuading consumers to divulge their personal and sensitive financial information including your credit card number, expiration date, Card Verification Value Code (CVV/CVC), and other personally identifiable information, claiming your account was suspended, deactivated, or terminated. Many times, the victims are unaware that the caller or texter is an imposter until it is too late and the sensitive information has been compromised.
Be VERY suspicious of any phone call, email or text message with urgent requests for personal information. HORIZON CREDIT UNION WILL NEVER CONTACT YOU TO ASK YOU FOR ACCOUNT INFORMATION. We have your account information and we assure you that it is secure and backed up. DO NOT CALL THE NUMBER PROVIDED OR ACCESS A LINK IN AN EMAIL. Call our regular telephone number 801-451-5064 and we can help you with any questions you may have. Calling the telephone number included in the Text Message, may lead to a pre-recorded message that is meant to sound like it is Horizon Credit Union. The recording will mention that in order to resolve a security issue. WE WILL NEVER request this information from you via phone, text message, email or any other form of communication. How can you tell a real web site from a phishing web site? One way is to look for an icon of a closed pad lock at the top or bottom of the web page. Generally if there is a closed lock icon on the page the information you send is encrypted by the web server and the site is real. An open lock is a non-secure site and may be a scam. Another way is to look at the address in the address bar. If the address is “https” it is a secure site. If it is http without the s at the end it is not secure and could possibly be a phishing site. Visit our education center here for more information on identity theft: ID Protection