Email: info@eicu.org

Member Alerts :

The Jury Duty Scam:

The scammer calls claiming to work for the local court and claims you've failed to report for jury duty. He tells you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.

The victim will often rightly claim they never received the jury duty notification. The scammer then asks the victim for confidential information for "verification" purposes.

Specifically, the scammer asks for the victim's Social Security number, birth date, and sometimes even for credit card numbers and other private information;
exactly what the scammer needs to commit identity theft.

So far, this jury duty scam has been reported in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state.

It's easy to see why this works. The victim is clearly caught off guard, and is understandably upset at the prospect of a warrant being issued for his or her arrest. So, the victim is much less likely to be vigilant about protecting their confidential information.

In reality, court workers will never call you to ask for social security numbers and other private information. In fact, most courts follow up via snail mail and rarely, if ever, call prospective jurors.

Action: Never give out your Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information when you receive a telephone call.

This jury duty scam is the latest in a series of identity theft scams where scammers use the phone to try to get people to reveal their Social Security number, credit card numbers or other personal confidential information. It doesn't matter *why* they are calling;
all the reasons are just different variants of the same scam.

E-mail Scam:

At least one state treasury department has received information from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about a fraudulent scam being conducted by e-mail.

Some members (taxpayers) may receive e-mail from a non-IRS source indicating the member (taxpayer) is "under audit" and needs to complete a questionnaire within 48 hours "to avoid the assessment of penalties and interest." The e-mail refers to an "e-audit" and references the IRS Form 1040. The taxpayer is asked for social security numbers, bank account numbers and other confidential information.

The Internal Revenue Service does not conduct "e-audits," nor does it notify taxpayers of a pending audit via e-mail. This e-mail is not from the IRS. Do not to provide the requested information. This may be an identity-theft attempt. If you receive e-mail of this nature, please contact the IRS office in your area.

Remember: Always safe guard your PIN Numbers and Passwords. Do not share them with others, do not write them down. Avoid using obvious numbers/letters, or easy sequences such as 1234.

Remember: DO NOT send cash to EIFCU (or anywhere) via regular or inter-office mail. EIFCU is not responsible for discrepancies in the amount we receive.

Identity Theft:

Identity Theft claims nearly half a million victims every year and costs financial institutions more than 5 billion, according to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, San Diego.

Preventing Identity Theft:

• Before revealing personal financial information, find out whom you are dealing with. 
• Only give your social security number when absolutely necessary. 
• Keep items with personal information in a safe place and either shred them or tear them up when you don't need them anymore. 
• Order a copy of your credit report at least once per year. Remember, we will run a report for you for free yearly and go over it with you!!!  Verify that your report is accurate. 
• Look over your credit card and credit union statments each month for suspicious activity.
• Make a copy of all of your financial cards and insurance in case your wallet is ever stolen, you will have all of the information you need to accurately report the loss. 
• Consider the information you're supplying on an entry to win a car, shopping spree, and so on.  in order to win, some information-such as your age or income ranges-usually is not necessary.

Computer Disposal 101:

Getting a new computer?  Don't overlook two issues with the old one: disposing of it and protecting your identity.  Don't just toss it in the trash.  You can donate it to a local charity.  However, remember it isn't enough to delete the files on the hard drive.  Readily accessible shareware programs could recover most of the deleted information.  The best way to protect yourself is to overwrite the disk.  There are many programs that will do this.PC Inspector e-maxx (www.pcinspector.de/emaxx/uk/welcome.htm) meets the strict standard of the U.S. military.  This program is FREE!

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