Updated June 2023
Protect your personal information.
Your information is valuable. We want to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
First things first: what is phishing? It’s when scammers use email, text, or phone calls to try and trick you into giving them your password, account numbers, social security number, or other private data.
Members and non-members report phishing texts claiming to be from STCU. These texts try to trick or scare you into clicking on a link or to text back with confidential information that could compromise your accounts.
Lazy, uncreative fraudsters send thousands of phony "STCU" texts to random phone numbers, knowing that a certain percentage will reach real members.
Don't take the bait! We never send scary, ominous, threatening, or unexpected texts or emails asking you for private information. We’ll also never send you a code for logging in and then ask you to verbally tell us what that code is.
If you’re not sure it’s real, please contact us. We’ll never be offended you want to verify the contact with us. When in doubt, reach out.
Did you receive something that looks “phishy”?
Report anything you think is a scam to STCU ASAP. Sending us as much information about it as you can helps our cyber security team get scam sites taken down.
If you didn’t click the link you can report the message and delete it right away.
If you clicked a link, let us know through a safe and known method. You can come into a branch or call one of the numbers on our website.
Not sure if something is real? Pause and ask yourself these questions:
- Do I know the sender?
- Could I call them to verify the text?
- Was I expecting a message like this?
- Is this an appropriate way for a business to reach me about my personal account?
- If this was so urgent, why are they sending a threatening text?
- Is there a legitimate reason they need me to respond quickly?
Unfortunately, there are a lot of ways your personal information could have gotten into the wrong hands. There’s a chance you clicked on a link months ago, but didn’t see any fraud activity until recently.
The best ways to protect yourself are to slow down and determine if the message is legitimate, don’t click links or reply to a message until you know it’s real, and be skeptical – very skeptical.
You can learn more about keeping your personal information safe by heading to our fraud and scam support webpage.
