phishing scam Protect Yourself By Connie Lewis
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raudsters are nothing if not innovative. They keep up with the times and trends. As emails have given way to text messaging as a communication preference, scam artists have followed suit. Email usage has shrunk and now has a smaller audience, with texts having a higher read rate. So, those wishing to separate you from your money or information will typically adopt an area code you are familiar with, and will pretend to be a nearby business, hoping you’ll respond with information that is better kept private. David Glod is the Vice President of Information Security at Mountain America Credit Union. It is his job to protect their members and others from falling victim to these schemes. Glod taught computer forensics and security and risk control at the University
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of Utah before moving to Mountain America Credit Union. “Basically, my team and I are charged with protecting members’ data and their finances. We are responsible for finding vulnerabilities and flaws and remediating them before they become a bigger problem. We are looking for anything suspicious,” Glod says. The latest text message frauds are those pretending to be from a financial institution. So what can you look out for? Glod explains that the message will probably be from an unfamiliar phone number; one a person wouldn’t recognize from their bank, credit union, or credit card company. A second clue is that the text won’t reference the person by name, but rather “Dear Member” or “Dear Customer.” And third, says Glod, the text will be
