Protecting Your Finances This Holiday Season
With the holidays quickly approaching, you'll likely be swiping your card and making more online transactions than normal. With more financial activity than usual happening around the globe, and consumers potentially paying a little less attention to their accounts, this is a favorite time of year for fraudsters. From counterfeit goods, to charity scams, to travel scams, and beyond, there are countless possible ways that scammers may attempt to get their hands on your information.
The good news, however, is that financial institutions and card services, as well as merchants, have several measures in place to help protect consumers' financial accounts and sensitive information. Consumers, too, can do their part in preventing fraud from happening to them.
At 3Rivers, we work hard to ensure your identity and your accounts remain safe from scammers through a combination of products and services. There are instances, though, in which a scam may slip past these measures, so it's important for you to stay alert and proactive, too. Here's what you should know about fraud protection this season — and always.
How 3Rivers Protects Your Accounts
- EMV Chip Technology: Our cards contain chips, which offer an increased level of encryption that is used to protect your information. | Learn more.
- Fraud Monitoring System: 3Rivers utilizes a fraud monitoring system called EnFact. This system helps to monitor your debit and credit card transactions for suspicious activity. EnFact will contact you at your home phone number and cell phone number that we have on file to verify suspicious activity on your account. | Learn more.
- Card Control: This is a card monitoring service that allows you to control the security and flexibility over your debit, HSA, and credits cards. You can set spending limits, control where your card is being used, and receive alerts of any transactions that occur. | Learn more.
- Marked Cards: Due to the possibility of fraud, 3Rivers has card blocks set up that may decline transactions when traveling. Please set up a travel plan in Card Control before your trip or contact us at 800.825.3641 so we can mark your card for travel.
- Text Alerts: 3Rivers encourages members to opt in to receive text alerts, which includes notifications about data breaches. | Learn more.
How You Can Protect Your Accounts
In addition to taking advantage of the above fraud protection methods, we encourage you to:
- Make sure that we have your correct contact information on file, should we need to reach out about suspicious activity. Ensure your current contact information is on file by updating your information within online or mobile banking, calling us at 800.825.3641, or stopping into your nearest branch.
- Monitor your accounts. You can check your 3Rivers accounts anytime, anywhere, with our mobile app and online access. Also, check your credit report once a year to make sure there is no suspicious activity.
- Refrain from providing your personal information when you are unsure of the source.
- Do your research before you cash checks from unexpected givers.
- Change online passwords frequently. Make sure they use a mix of numbers, letters, and special characters.
- Keep your anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software up-to-date.
- Avoid opening suspicious emails and clicking on suspicious links. These will often contain major (or even minor) misspellings, email addresses and logos close to, but not entirely identical, to legitimate sources, and "too good to be true" offers (like, "$10,000 has been wired to your accounts! Click to accept.")
- Thoroughly destroy any documents containing personal information. Even those that contain only your name and address.
- There are several other measures you can take to prevent fraud from happening to you. Click here to see more.
What To Do If You're a Victim of Fraud
ACT IMMEDIATELY. If it involves your 3Rivers account, please let us know:
- Email fraud@trfcu.org or send a secure message from your Online Access Message Center if you see a fraud attempt.
- Call us at 800.825.3641.
- Visit any of our branches.
Give us as much detail as you can, but NEVER provide account numbers by e-mail. If necessary, we’ll contact you to discuss further and personally assist you.