In an ongoing effort to combat identity theft, several tips developed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are listed below which may help you protect yourself from becoming a victim of this latest scam.
If you receive an e-mail that warns you with little or no notice, that an account of yours will be shut down unless you reconfirm your billing information, you should not reply or click on the link in the e-mail. Instead, you should contact the company cited in the e-mail directly using a telephone number or website address you know to be genuine.
You should avoid e-mailing personal and financial information. Before submitting financial information through a website, you should look for the "lock" icon on the browser's status bar. NCUA also suggests looking for "https" in the website address. Both of these indicators signal the information is secure during transmission.
You should review credit card and credit union account statements as soon as you receive them to determine weather there are any unauthorized charges. If the statement is late by more than a couple of days, you should call the credit card company or credit union to confirm their billing address and account balances.
You should report suspicious activity to the FTC. Send the actual spam to uce@ftc.gov. It you believe you have been a victim of a fraudulent scheme, you should file a complaint at www.ftc.gov, and then visit the FTC's Identity Theft website at www.ftc.gov/idtheft to learn how to minimize your risk of damage from identity theft.
