FTC Consumer Alert | Check 21 (pdf) | ABA Fraud Alert
Fraudulent Emails | Anti-Terrorist Letters
Advice to Consumers | When is Your Check Not A Check
VA Loss of ID Data

FTC Consumer Alert
‘Active Duty’ Alerts Help Protect Military Personnel from Identity Theft
The last thing you want to worry about while you’re on deployment is someone assuming your identity to commit financial fraud. Now, you don’t have to. Amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act allow you to place an “active duty alert” in your credit report. According to the Federal Trade Commission, one of the agencies that enforces the FCRA, the alert requires creditors to verify your identity before granting credit in your name.

Your credit report contains information on where you live, how you pay your bills, and whether you’ve been sued, arrested, or filed for bankruptcy. Nationwide consumer reporting companies sell the information in your report to creditors, insurers, employers, and other businesses that use it to evaluate applications for credit, and a host of other activities, including insurance, employment, or renting a home.

Your credit report can be a tool to help you guard against — or discover — identity theft, which occurs when someone uses your personal information — like your name, your Social Security number, or your credit card number — to commit fraud. Identity thieves may use your information to open a new credit card account in your name. Then, when they don’t pay the bills, the delinquent account is reported on your credit report. Inaccurate or fraudulent information could affect your ability to get credit, insurance, or housing, now or in the future. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years cleaning up the mess the thieves have made of their names and credit records.

If you are a member of the military and away from your usual duty station, you may place an “active duty alert” on your credit report to help minimize the risk of identity theft while you are deployed. When a business sees the alert on your credit report, it must verify your identity before issuing you credit. The business may try to contact you directly, but if you’re on deployment, that may be impossible. As a result, the law allows you to use a personal representative to place or remove an alert. Active duty alerts on your report are effective for one year, unless you request that the alert be removed sooner. If your deployment lasts longer, you may place another alert on your report.

To place an “active duty” alert, or to have it removed, call the toll-free fraud number of one of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies: Equifax, Experian, or Trans Union. The company will require you to provide appropriate proof of your identity, which may include your

Social Security number, your name, address, and other personal information.
• Equifax: 1-800-525-6285; www.equifax.com
• Experian: 1-888-EXPERIAN (397-3742); www.experian.com
• TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289; www.transunion.com

Contact only one of the three companies to place an alert — the company you call is required to contact the other two, which will place an alert on their versions of your report, as well. If your contact information changes before your alert expires, remember to update it.

When you place an active duty alert, your name will be removed from the nationwide consumer reporting companies’ marketing lists for prescreened offers of credit and insurance for two years — unless you ask that your name be placed on the lists before then. Prescreened offers — sometimes called “preapproved” offers — are based on information in your credit report that indicates you meet certain criteria set by the offeror.

To learn more about identity theft and your credit rights under the FCRA and the Fair and
Accurate Credit Transactions Act, visit ftc.gov/credit.

The FTC works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business
practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them.

To file a complaint or to get free information on consumer issues, visit ftc.gov or call toll-free, 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357); TTY: 1-866-653-4261. The FTC enters Internet, telemarketing, identity theft, and other fraud-related complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

ABA Fraud Alert

Your bank customers or employees may receive a fraudulent "phishing" e-mail that is circulating, asking for credit card and personal information. This message purports to be from the ABA and is similar to what the FDIC experienced in January. Please ensure that your employees and customers do not respond to this message. If any have responded, ask them to alert their financial institutions. We ask that anyone who receives this message to forward it to alert@aba.com. ABA has alerted the regulatory and law enforcement authorities about this scam. Here is the fraudulent e-mail's original text:

Dear Sir/Madam,

You have been identified as a customer of one of ABA's ( American Bankers Association ) member banks. The American Bankers Association would like to inform You about the adoption of a decision of a new Security Policy. The new policy entered into force on 1st March 2004. Due to the extensive number of credit card frauds, ABA has decided to take preventative countermeasures in order to ensure the highest level of security and safety for the customers of its member banks.

Our records indicate that You possess a status of a registered credit card holder with one of ABA's member banks, and, according to the new Security Policy of ABA, You are required to verify your credit card(s) information. Please fill in all the necessary details in the webform provided below and then click on the "Submit" button. All data entered will be encrypted and sent to ABA's main server for further processing, after which it will be compared to the existing database of your local bank. You will be notified by email for the outcome of the operation within a period of 7 days.

The deadline for credit card(s) verification is 31st March 2004. All verification requests received after this date will be rejected by ABA's main server. If You fail to verify your credit card(s) with Your local issuing bank before the aforementioned date, Your credit card(s) will be disabled until verification is completed. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank You for Your business.

Sincerely,

ABA Customer Service Staff



Fraudulent Emails
Recently, many Americans have received a series of fraudulent emails, which direct recipients to websites where they are asked to verify sensitive personal information. The emails claim that the individual’s personal information is necessary to assist in the fight against terrorism or for some other purpose supposedly required by law. These emails are purportedly sent from several government agencies or include content related to government agencies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and others. The websites to which the email recipients are directed are often very similar to, if not actual clones of official government sites. 

The fraudulent emails are part of a scam known as “phishing.” Phishing is the fraudulent scheme of sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be a legitimate company. The email attempts to con the user into surrendering private information that could later be used for identity theft. The email directs the user to visit a web-site where they are asked to update personal information, such as name, account and credit card numbers, passwords, social security numbers and other information. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information.

As part of the Treasury Department’s efforts to fight identity theft, we want to assure Americans that federal financial agencies do not communicate with consumers by email requesting important personal information such as your name, account numbers, date of birth, social security number. 

Consumers can protect themselves from this latest identity theft scam by following these useful tips, which were developed by the Federal Trade Commission:

• If you get an email that warns you, with little or no notice, that an account of yours will be shut down unless you reconfirm your billing information, do not reply or click on the link in the email. Instead, contact the company cited in the email using a telephone number or Web site address you know to be genuine.

• Avoid emailing personal and financial information. Before submitting financial information through a Web site, look for the “lock” icon on the browser’s status bar. It signals that your information is secure during transmission.

• Review credit card and bank account statements as soon as you receive them to determine whether there are any unauthorized charges. If your statement is late by more than a couple of days, call your credit card company or bank to confirm your billing address and account balances.

• Report suspicious activity to the FTC. Send the actual spam to uce@ftc.gov. If you believe you’ve been scammed, file your complaint at www.ftc.gov, and then visit the FTC’s Identity Theft Web site (www.ftc.gov/idtheft) to learn how to minimize your risk of damage from identity theft.

The Treasury and federal financial regulators are working hard to combat identity theft including the use of new tools in legislation recently signed by President Bush.  But all consumers must take reasonable precautions in the use of their personal financial information in order to help prevent themselves from becoming victims of identity thieves.

Anti-Terrorist Letters
The second scheme involves Fraudulent ANTI-TERRORIST STOP ORDER letters, purportedly sent by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). These letters are being sent to bank customers. Copies of these ANTI-TERRORIST letters have been received by FinCEN that notify consumers that mandatory fees, in amounts of approximately $25,000, are required for the issuance of a ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE before transactions may continue to be conducted.

These letters were NOT sent by FinCEN and represent a fraudulent attempt to elicit funds from customers. Please see FinCEN’s Website to see an example of one of these letters. Consumers should NOT provide any information nor send any funds, to any address as indicated in these letters. Further, consumers should NOT follow any instructions contained in these letters to access their accounts on-line.

Further, there are instances in which other letters are being circulated which claim that FinCEN is freezing assets and endorsing investment schemes. FinCEN does NOT have authority to freeze assets and does NOT endorse investment schemes.

FinCEN is working closely with law enforcement agencies to identify the source of these letters and disrupt these scams. Until this is accomplished, if consumers receive any letters such as these, or experience any similar attempts to obtain account information or funds, they are requested to notify FinCEN at webmaster@fincen.treas.gov.


A fraudulent e-mail purporting to be from the American Bankers Association is asking consumers to provide personal account information, including their Social Security numbers and credit card information. ABA did not – and would not – authorize such a communication. Similar so-called "phishing" incidents have been increasingly common on the Online, targeting banks and other institutions – and even the FDIC recently. ABA is working with law enforcement officials to identify the source of the e-mails and to disrupt transmission.



Advice to Consumers
The association advises consumers:

• Never give out personal financial information to anyone unless you have initiated the call, e-mail or contact;

• If you have responded to this bogus email, contact your financial institution immediately to protect your account; and

• Forward fraudulent e-mails that use ABA’s name to alert@aba.com.

ABA members may want to alert their customer service representatives and other customer-contact personnel to the existence of the fraudulent e-mail so that they can answer customers’ questions.

Read more.

For more information on the e-mail, or phishing in general, e-mail ABA’s Doug Johnson, senior policy analyst, ABA Economic Policy & Research.