Monday, October 20, 2014

Identity Theft Solutions - Member Security Center

https://www.membersecuritycenter.com/
Protecting your identity is one of the most important safeguards you can manage in this world of data exchanges. Your identity is important to you but have you considered how valuable your identity might be to a criminal? The total financial losses attributed to identity theft in 2013 were $24.7 BILLION which was much higher than the identity theft losses of $13.2 BILLION in 2010. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Justice). Identity theft crimes are clearly on the rise. What steps can you take to protect your good name and credit?

North Alabama Educators Credit Union has partnered with the Member Security Center (MSC) to provide a new service that we are excited to offer to our members. The MSC is an affordably priced identity theft solution that has many features for our members. MSC’s Cyber Watch monitoring service scans thousands of websites, chat rooms, forums and networks and alerts members if their non-public information is being traded on the Internet. This proactive approach will allow members to act early and will help them to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft in the first place. There are three reasonable pricing plans of $1.95 monthly, $3.95 monthly, or $12.95 monthly.

These reasonably priced retail MSC identity theft solutions are powered by the same identity theft wholesaler that supplies identity theft retail products for the big national brand names out there. The difference is you don’t pay twice as much for the same level of identity theft protection and monitoring. This is more of a member service for the credit union members of North Alabama Educators Credit Union, not a big profit maker.

I signed up for the $3.95 monthly service on the first day and was amazed to see the number of sex offenders within a relatively small radius. If a registered sex offender moves near our area I will receive an alert stating as such. If a new credit account is opened I will receive a notification on that. There are professional resources and money coverages for costs associated with restoring your identity should that occur. Other valuable services are available depending on the product level selected.

Members are encouraged to take a look at this MSC Identity Theft program. If you already have an identity theft product, compare it with the various MSC programs available. If you do not have an identity theft program protecting your good name now, we would strongly encourage you to consider adopting some type of managed identity theft program. Unfortunately, the world we live in now translates to more of a “when” scenario rather than an “if” scenario in terms of becoming an identity theft victim.

The MSC Identity Theft website has plenty of useful resources and information to help our members make an informed decision on possible identity theft coverage.


 

Friday, October 10, 2014

IRS Scam by E-mail

Below is the text of an e-mail received claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service;

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Subject: Your FED TAX payment (ID:3Q5IRS367654547) was Rejected

*** PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL ***

Your federal Tax payment (ID: 3Q5IRS367654547), recently sent from your checking account was returned by the your financial institution.

For more information, please download notification below. (Security PDF Adobe file)
(Actual Link removed here due to malicious nature of the link).

(Google Disk Drive is a file hosting service operated by Google, Inc.)


Transaction Number: 3Q5IRS367654547}

Payment Amount: $ 5051.63
Transaction status: Rejected

ACH Trace Number: 0000000000
Transaction Type: ACH Debit Payment-DDA

Internal Revenue Service
Metro Plex 1, 8401 Corporate Drive, Suite 300, Landover, MD 20785

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The Internal Revenue Service does NOT send out any e-mail communications for payments, refunds, or filing corrections. Any such e-mail received should be considered as fraudulent. NEVER click on any links provided in a suspicious email. The Internal Revenue Service asks that all fraudulent or suspicious e-mails be forwarded to phishing@irs.gov.