Recent Phishing Email Portrays Itself as Coming From
VISA
It was brought to our attention, on Thursday, June 2nd,
that an email was sent from a source claiming to be VISA and has been designed
to show their logo and look like their site. This is a scam as it indicates that
you should activate Verified by Visa for protection while shopping online and
provides a link to do so. In a new twist, the link not only sends you to a page
to enter your personal information, but also will try to download a form of a
Trojan virus to your computer. In addition, the “scammers” are getting more
savvy and have placed a fake website address at the top of the personal
information page making it appear to be a secure site from VISA.
This email came from a fraudulent source. While this
situation has nothing to do with us or with your credit union account(s), we
felt it was important to share this with you to help protect you and your family
from potential fraud as your financial well-being is of utmost importance to us.
If you have a GECU VISA credit card,
we do encourage you to activate
Verified by Visa to
protect you while shopping online, but you should do so only from a link from
our site. As we have all of your information, the only information asked for is
to verify it is you and to set-up a password.
We want you to know, as your financial institution, that we will never send an unsolicited email asking for your personal financial
information. Also, as a general rule, email is not a secure form of
communication, you should never divulge your personal information (i.e. full
member/account numbers, your entire SS#, and especially not your account number
and a password) via email to us, or to anyone.
For more information about phishing scams and identity
theft, please review the detailed information provided by the
Federal Trade Commission.
