Avoiding Identity Theft

Mission Bank will never ask you to provide personal information via our website or by email request.

A tip to avoid identity theft: Be alert for false emails purporting to be from banks, credit card companies, or federal agencies requesting personal information. Never provide your identification information, including your social security number, any PIN number or checking or savings account number in response to these requests.

What is your risk level for identity theft? Take this quick “Identity Quotient” test to find out.

For more information on identity theft, click on any of the following links:

Informational Video: Your Security, Our Priority
Take Charge: Fighting Back Against Identity Theft Kit
Fighting Back Against Identity Theft – Federal Trade Commission

Spam/Phishing

Spam/Phishing is a scam! It is an attempt to steal your personal and confidential information.

If you receive text messages and/or automated phone calls asking for confidential information (user names, passwords, account numbers, etc), do not reply to the message and report it to your Cellular Service Provider immediately!

Mission Bank does NOT use these methods to contact customers. Please be assured that protecting your Privacy is very important to us.

Please review these security measures:

“Phishing” is the latest form of identity theft. It’s when thieves act as if they are representing an organization and try to hook the consumer into providing personal information. Once the consumer is hooked, the thieves can do lasting damage to a consumer’s financial accounts. They can dupe customers into providing their Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, Online Banking passwords, mothers’ maiden names and other personal information.

The thieves often pose as a:

• Financial institution
• Credit card company
• Online merchant
• Utility or other biller
• Internet service provider
• Government agency
• Prospective employer

Estimated to cost consumers $1.2 billion last year, according to research firm Gartner, Inc., phishing is perpetuated by both phone and e-mail, although email is more prevalent.

Here’s how it works:

Consumers receive an email/text/phone call from an organization with which they do business. These contacts typically include bogus appeals such as problems with an account or billing errors, and request the consumer to confirm his/her personal information. Different approaches include things such as “We’re updating our records,” “We’ve identified fraudulent activity on your account,” or “Valuable account and personal information was lost due to a computer glitch.” To encourage people to act immediately, the email usually threatens that the account could be closed or canceled.

Consumers receive an email/text/phone call from an organization with which they do business. These typically include bogus appeals such as problems with an account or billing errors, and asks the consumer to confirm his/her personal information. Different approaches include things such as “We’re updating our records,” “We’ve identified fraudulent activity on your account,” or “Valuable account and personal information was lost due to a computer glitch.” To encourage people to act immediately, the email usually threatens that the account could be closed or canceled.

Most emails ask recipients to follow an embedded link that takes them to an exact replica of the victim company’s website. Graphics on the counterfeit site are so convincing that even experts often can have a hard time distinguishing the fake site from the real one.

Despite the convincing appeals, consumers should not respond to unsolicited emails that direct them to divulge personal identifying information. Reputable organizations that consumers legitimately do business with generally do not request account numbers or passwords unless the consumer initiated the transaction.

Unfortunately, by hijacking the trusted brands of well-known and reputable organizations nationwide, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Gartner, Inc. recently reported that more than 57 million Americans think they have received a phishing email, and the FBI has called phishing the “hottest, most troubling new scam on the Internet.”

For more information or to report Identity Theft, please visit:

Federal Trade Commission ID Theft

We want to assure our customers that we do not send any email, text messages or phone calls asking you to provide us any personal or private identifying information.

Below are some security suggestions:

If you encounter an unsolicited email, text or phone call that asks you, either directly or through a website, for personal financial or identity information (such as social security number, passwords, account numbers or other identifiers) DO NOT RESPOND.

If a website address is not familiar to you, then it is probably not real. Only use the address that you have used before or start at your normal homepage.

Always report fraudulent or suspicious email to your Internet Service Provider. Reporting instances of spoof websites will help get those bogus websites shut down before they can do any more harm.

Always report fraudulent and spam Text Messages or Phone Calls to your Cellular Service Provider.

Most companies require you to log in to a secure site. Look for the lock at the bottom of your browser and “https” in front of the website address.

Take note of the header address on the website. Most legitimate sites will have a relatively short internet address that usually depicts the business followed by .com, .net or .org. Spoof sites are more likely to have an excessively long string of characters in the header with a legitimate business name somewhere in the string, or possibly not at all.

If you have any doubts about an email or website, contact the legitimate company directly. Make a copy of the questionable website’s URL address, send it to the legitimate business and ask if the address is legitimate.

If you’ve been victimized by a spoofed email or website, you should contact your local police or sheriff’s department and file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Fraud Complaint Center.

When creating your passwords, don’t use information that could easily be linked to you (i.e. phone number, your date of birth, address numbers).

Change your password often. We suggest changing your password every 30 days. (do not allow your browser to store your user name and password)

Do not share your passwords or Online Banking passwords with anyone.

Do not write your passwords or Online Banking passwords down where they may easily be found by others.