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Consumer Security Advisory

Recently, many individuals and small businesses have been the target of identity theft scams directing them to Web sites or phone numbers where they are asked to verify personal and financial information. The messages claim the information is necessary to update or validate billing or contact information, respond to fraud or reactivate an account. These scams employ a variety of techniques, including e-mail, imposter Web sites, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), text messaging and malicious software. You can help protect yourself from identity thieves by learning more about these scams and following the tips provided below.

Don’t Get Hooked by a ‘Phishing’ Scam

Phishing (fishing for information) is the fraudulent scheme of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be a legitimate company. The e-mail attempts to persuade the user into surrendering private information such as credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security numbers, date of birth and passwords that could later be used for identify theft. The e-mail directs the user to a “look-alike” Web site of a legitimate business, tricking the user into thinking he is responding to a bona fide request. The fraudulent “look-alike” Web sites can be so cleverly designed that they may be impossible to distinguish from the legitimate site.

‘Pharming’ Information

Pharming is a form of domain spoofing. In simple terms, rather than spamming you with e-mail requests to confirm your financial or personal information, pharmers work behind the scenes. They change your local internet provider server to redirect your Web request to a fake site. This means that when you enter a web address, such as www.abc.com; you will be taken to a fake website rather than the legitimate website! As far as you know, you're connected to the correct site. No e-mail is involved, and if they copied the appearance of the real site well, you would have no way to know that anything was wrong.

Other Scams

Vishing is a technique to gather information under false pretenses through the use of Voice over Internet Protocol. It employs Caller ID spoofing, which displays a telephone number in Caller ID which is not the actual originating phone number and may appear to be the bank phone number. An example of this would be an automated voicemail message alerting the consumer that there had been fraudulent activity in an account or on a credit card and requesting a call back. When consumers call the number, they are asked to provide their information via the phone’s keypad.

SMishing uses SMS texting to deliver the “bait” to trick consumers into divulging personal information. An example of this would be a text message saying, “Your account has been suspended. Call 999-999-9999 to activate.” Alternatively, a link to an illegitimate Web site may be provided. Like the other scams, the recipient is then asked to provide credit or debit card numbers, PIN numbers and other financial or personal information.

Malware, or malicious software, performs illegal actions unanticipated by the user. Its intent is to yield financial benefits to the distributor of the software. An example of this is a keylogger program, which installs itself either into a Web browser or as a device driver. Once installed, the keylogger monitors data being input and sends relevant data, usually account user names and passwords, to a phishing server.

Consumer Tips

The Federal Trade Commission and Park National Bank suggest these tips to help you avoid getting hooked by identity theft scams:

  • Legitimate companies don’t ask for personal and financial information via e-mail, text or automated voicemail messages. If you get an e-mail, pop-up, text or voicemail message asking for sensitive information, do not reply. If it is an electronic message, do not click on any of the links in the message.

  • Use anti-virus and anti-spyware software, as well as a firewall, and update them all frequently. Some phishing e-mails contain software that can harm your computer or track your activities on the Internet without your knowledge.

  • Do not include personal or financial information in e-mails. E-mail is not a secure method of transmitting personal information. If you initiate a transaction and want to provide your personal or financial information through an organization’s Web site, look for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon on the browser’s status bar or a URL that begins “https:” (the ‘s’ stands for “secure”).

  • Be cautious about opening any attachments or downloading any files from e-mails you receive, regardless of who sent them. These files can contain viruses or other software that can weaken your computer’s security.

  • Review credit card and bank account statements as soon as you receive them to check for unauthorized charges. If your statement is late by more than a couple of days, call your credit card company or bank to confirm your billing address, recent transactions and account balances.

Park National Bank’s secure online banking sites for businesses and consumers will ask the user to select a picture and personal phrase when the online account is first set up. These items will be displayed each time you log in, prior to entering in your login information. Do not enter passwords or other sensitive information if you do not see or do not recognize the picture and phrase.

At Park National Bank, our customers’ security is of the utmost importance. We hope you will find this information helpful. If you ever have any questions regarding the security of your accounts with us, don’t hesitate to call us at 1-866-727-5628.