Helpful Information

What is Identity Fraud?

Identity Fraud is when someone other than yourself uses your personal information without your permission to make illegal purchases, withdrawals, or open accounts. Using a variety of methods, criminals steal your personal information such as your social security number, credit card numbers, date of birth, driver’s license number and mother’s maiden name to perform fraudulent activities using your identity. This can damage your credit rating and reputation. It can happen to anyone!

Facts about Identity Fraud

• It is the most common fraud complaint brought to law enforcement agencies and consumer protection groups; and
• It is the fastest-growing crime in the United States; and
• It is a silent crime - most people do not know they’ve been victimized until months later; and
• It is a crime which costs victims nearly $500 million a year.

What is Donley County State Bank doing to prevent Identity Fraud?

Legislation was passed after the events of September 11th to help prevent fraud. Evidence shows that credit card, debit card, and similar fraud are major sources of funding for terrorists. To safeguard our nation against terrorists, and to help prevent you from becoming a fraud victim, all financial institutions are required to more carefully verify the identity of our account owners and loan applicants.

This means we may ask you additional questions at the time of your transaction. You may be asked to provide one or more types of identification, such as a driver’s license, U. S. Taxpayer ID Number, or other government-issued documentation that verifies your nationality or residency. Answering these questions and providing the required identification forms help us to better protect you against identity fraud.

What happens to the information you provide Donley County State Bank?

New regulations require us to verify the information you provide to us using one or more methods. For instance, we may compare your information against governmental databases that identify terrorists. Any information we obtain is safeguarded according to our Privacy Policy and other information-sharing practices we provided to you. This way you can be confident your personal information remains safe and secure as we work toward preventing all types of fraud.

What else can you do to prevent fraud? 

• Never give any of your personal information to anyone in person, over the telephone or the internet, unless you initiate the contact.
• Never give any of your personal information to any website that doesn’t use encryption or other secure methods to protect it.
• Never give any of your personal information in response to an unsolicited e-mail claiming to be from your financial institution or some other highly credible source. This is a technique referred to as “phishing”. Be sure to validate the request before providing the information by contacting the bank to ask about the request.
• Review account statements regularly to ensure all charges are correct and make sure that they are arriving in a timely manner.
• Examine account statements immediately upon receiving them to determine whether there are any unauthorized transactions. Report any that you find immediately to the financial institution.
• Limit the information on your checks and do not carry around any more credit and debit cards than necessary.
• Before disposing of credit card solicitations, credit card statements, financial institution statements, utility bills, medical bills, insurance information or other items of a sensitive nature, shred them first.
• Keep your personal identification number (PINs), credit cards, debit cards and other personal information in a secure place.
• Never use PINs or other passwords that are easy to guess, such as birthdates or pet names.

What should you do if you are a victim of identity fraud?

Call all of the national credit bureaus and ask that a fraud alert be attached to your credit file.

Close all accounts that are or may be affected by the identity theft

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