In recent years we have observed many of our members dealing with fraud attacks of all kinds. Often the fraud doesn’t even include their credit union accounts at the start, but it could eventually impact their credit union accounts. We have seen scams involving many household names such as Amazon, Norton Anti-Virus, United States Postal Services, the IRS and more recently an EZ Pass scam.
Then there are the more direct account attacks involving account takeover where fraudsters have garnered enough member information to pull money out of member accounts. And of course there’s the continued impact of check fraud and wire fraud that are a daily battle here at the credit union. Other fraud involves opening loans in your name fraudulently and obtaining title to your home…a growing and concerning fraud given the value of that asset.
In short, fraud is everywhere in today’s world and we fear it may get worse as Artificial Intelligence takes root.
This is not meant to scare members, but to be sure you are aware of what’s been happening. Here is the good news. You are in the best position to stop almost all fraud by not giving out your information, and most importantly by monitoring your accounts for unusual activity. The monitoring of your accounts is so key because the sooner that fraud is identified the better chance there is to recover funds. This is where we have seen challenges as oftentimes after fraud is discovered many members tell us they don’t log on to their accounts often and were unaware of the transactions.
More good news for members on the fraud front is your credit union is dialed in to stopping it and we have had tremendous success preventing fraud where we can. We are now taking our efforts to a new level by putting you in control of helping you protect your financial life. Enter Carefull…..a new complimentary member benefit that offers you a range of fraud fighting tools. The key with Carefull is it’s easy, safe and simple! Once you set it up you simply need to be aware of its alerts and you will be armed with a great tool in stopping fraud.
So what is Carefull? Carefull is an all-in-one financial safety service that safeguards your and your loved ones' finances from scams, theft, money mistakes, credit fraud, leaks of personal info, and more.
Out of the box members will enjoy the following benefits from Carefull:
- $1 million in Identity Theft Insurance
- Credit Monitoring
- Home Title and Address monitoring, a vital tool against this new threat.
- Account monitoring for all accounts that you enter into Carefull. This can include your credit union account and any accounts you have elsewhere.
- Monitoring for one other member of your family is included.
- One-on-One fraud consultation with Carefull representatives.
- Ability to add Trusted Contacts
- Continual fraud education on new and emerging frauds.
I encourage all members to review the Carefull service and sign up if you find it fits your needs. If you want to hear from someone who has the service, here I am. I have been using Carefull as we prepared for the member rollout and I have been impressed with its functionality and appreciate the ID theft insurance, credit monitoring, title monitoring and account monitoring. You also, if you like, get a weekly review of all of these things, so you can take a weekly snapshot of your protection.
One other great feature is when you log on to your Carefull account it will alert you of the latest scams affecting America. For example, here’s a recent snapshot of that page noting the EZ Pass scam and the sad California wildfire scam. This page will keep you up to date on the newest scams.
We know our members are very savvy and may have a few questions, so please see the Carefull FAQ on page https://www.merckcu.com/carefull.
Thank you for your membership and I hope you find the Carefull service as powerful as we do to help protect against fraud!
Paul Gentile
President/CEO
pgentile@merckefcu.com
