Types of Threats
Identity theft can occur in many forms but a few have become more popular than others and can be found in practice all over the country. Phishing and Pharming, two of these popular methods, gather personal information by convincing the victims’ that they are giving their information directly to the bank.
Phishing is currently the most popular form of internet fraud and identity theft. The act of Phishing is when a criminal acts like a trusted member of a bank or business. This takes place generally in e-mail form or instant message form but has been seen in faxes as well. The criminal will try to convince the victim that they need some form of electronic information.
It is good to keep in mind that the Bank of St. Croix will never contact you via e-mail or instant message asking for your personal information. Customers should never disclose sensitive information about their banking to any source over the internet.
Pharming is when a criminal obtains the domain name of a bank and uses it to get victims to visit the site which looks like the bank’s. Clicking on this site will take you to another site where any information stored can be seen by the criminal. The act of Pharming is only possible when the original website was not properly protected and the user ignores warnings about the invalid server.