Social Engineering Fraud Increases Account Takeovers

Social Engineering Fraud Increases Account Takeovers

In an increasingly online world, threat actors seek to manipulate human behavior and exploit people’s trusting tendencies. Unfortunately, people are being scammed out of their login credentials through social engineering, resulting in account takeovers.

Fraudulent phone calls, emails, and text messages that seem to be from legitimate employees of financial institutions are on the rise. Once fraudsters have access to an account, they can commit fraud. With account access, fraudsters often:

  • Take advances line-of-credit loans, such as HELOCs,
  • Request wire transfers,
  • Send funds through person-to-person payments,
  • Transfer funds out of the account through an external transfer service,
  • Initiate ACH debits to pull funds from external accounts for deposit to the account and then transfer the funds out of the account before the ACH debit entries are returned unpaid, or
  • View canceled checks to create counterfeit checks

How to Protect Yourself

A credit union employee will never initiate a call, text, or email asking for your account number, login credentials, or other personal information.

Do not share your login information, passcodes, or PINs with anyone.

Use extreme caution when clicking on links in emails and text; never provide your login credentials when prompted to do so from an email or text.

Stay informed of scams currently taking place. Updates on scams can be found on our website’s Fraud Prevention Center and these other sources:

Fraud.org

Federal Trade Commission

AARP fraud website