Email Fraud Alert

Recently, there have been multiple email fraud attempts, known as "Phishing”, that were initiated via email sent to both the general public and to some credit union members that appeared to be from NCUA. The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) is the federal agency that charters and supervises federal credit unions and insures savings in federal and most state-chartered credit unions across the country through the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF), a federal fund backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. This false email asked for the recipient to click on a link to verify their credit union account registration. If the recipient proceeded to do so, the link directed them to a false website and asked for their credit union account number and PIN, along with other personal information.

NCUA does not ask credit union members for such personal information. Anyone who receives an email that purports to be from NCUA and asks for account information should consider it to be a fraudulent attempt to obtain their personal account data for an illegal purpose and should not follow the instructions in the email. If any member of Coastal Federal Credit Union receives any e-mail that attempts to extract personal information, please forward them to: idhelp@coastalfcu.org

If you responded to such an email and provided any confidential account information, please notify your credit union immediately of the scheme. You should also change your account’s PIN, and take any additional action recommended by your credit union to protect your account.

For more information, click here.

To file a report of this crime, go to www.cybercrime.gov. You may also contact the NCUA Fraud Hotline at 1-800-827-9650.

Also, be aware of any suspicious attempts, purporting to be from Paypal to obtain personal informations.  PayPal is one of the many legitimate companies that phishers commonly use to obtain account numbers, PINs, Social Security Numbers, etc.