South Sound Bank - Security

Security

Identity Theft

How Identity Theft Occurs

Skilled identity thieves use a variety of methods to gain access to your personal information. For example:

They get information from businesses or other institutions by:
- Stealing records from their employer,
- Bribing an employee who has access to these records, or
- Hacking into the organization’s computers.
They rummage through your trash, or the trash of businesses or dumps in a practice known as "dumpster diving."
They obtain credit reports by abusing their employer’s authorized access to credit reports or by posing as a landlord, employer, or someone else who may have a legal right to the information.
They steal credit and debit card numbers as your card is processed by using a special information storage device in a practice know as "skimming."
They steal wallets and purses containing identification and credit and bankcards.
They steal mail, including bank and credit card statements, pre-approved credit offers, new checks, or tax information.
They complete a "change of address form" to deliver your mail to another location.
They steal personal information from your home.
They scam information from you by posing as a legitimate businessperson or government official.

Once identity thieves have your personal information, they may:

Go on spending sprees using your credit and debit card account numbers to buy "big-ticket" items like computers that they can easily sell.
Open a new credit card account, using your name, date of birth, and SSN. When they don’t pay the bills, the delinquent account is reported on your credit report.
Change the mailing address on your credit card account. The imposter then runs up charges on the account. Because the bills are being sent to the new address, it may take some time before you realize there’s a problem.
Take out auto loans in your name.
Establish phone or wireless service in your name.
Counterfeit checks or debit cards, and drain your bank account.
Open a bank account in your name and write bad checks on that account.
File for bankruptcy under your name to avoid paying debts they’ve incurred, or to avoid eviction. Give your name to the police during an arrest. If they are released and don’t show up for their court date, and arrest warrant could be issued in your name.
Give your name to the police during an arrest. If they are released and don’t show up for their court date, and arrest warrant could be issued in your name.

If Your Identity’s Been Stolen

Even if you’ve been very careful about keeping your personal information to yourself, and identity thief can strike. If you suspect that your personal information has been used to commit fraud or theft, take the following four steps right away. Remember to follow up all calls in writing; send your letter by certified mail, return receipt requested, so you can document what the company received and when; and keep copies for your files.

Place a fraud alert on your credit report and review your credit reports. Also place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security Number. You may call the toll-free fraud number of anyone of the three major credit bureau’s to place a fraud alert on your credit report. This can help prevent an identity thief from opening additional accounts in your name. As soon as the credit bureau confirms your fraud alert, the other two credit bureau’s will automatically be notified to place fraud alerts on your credit report and all three reports will be sent to you free of charge.

Equifax – To report fraud, call:
1-800-525-6285, and write: PO Box 740256, Atlanta, GA 30374

Experian – To report fraud, call:
1-888-EXPERIAN (397-3742), and write: PO Box 2002, Allen, TX 75013

TransUnion – To report fraud, call:
1-800-680-7289, and write: Fraud Victim Assistance Division, PO Box 6790, Fullerton, CA 92834-6790.

Social Security Administration (fraud line):
1-800-269-0271

Once you receive your reports, review them carefully. Look for inquiries you didn’t initiate, accounts you didn’t open, and unexplained debits on your true accounts. You also should check that information such as your SSN, address(es), name or initial, and employers are correct. Inaccuracies in this information also may be due to typographical errors. Nevertheless, whether the inaccuracies are due to fraud or error, you should notify the credit bureau as soon as possible by telephone or in writing. You should continue to check your reports periodically, especially in the first year after you’ve discovered the theft, to make sure no new fraudulent activity has occurred. The automated "one-call" fraud alert process only works for the initial placement of your fraud alert. Orders for additional credit reports and renewals of your fraud alerts must be made separately at each of the three major credit bureaus.
Close any accounts that have been tampered with or opened fraudulently.
Credit Accounts.
Credit accounts include all accounts with banks, credit card companies and other lenders, and phone companies, utilities, ISPs, and other service providers. If you’re closing existing accounts and opening new ones, use new Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) and passwords.

If there are fraudulent charges or debits, ask the company about the following forms for disputing those transactions:

• For new unauthorized accounts, ask if the company accepts the ID Theft Affidavit (available at www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/affidavit.pdf). If they don’t, ask the representative to send you the company’s fraud dispute forms.
• For your existing accounts, ask the representative to send you the company’s fraud dispute forms.
• If your ATM card has been lost, stolen or otherwise compromised, cancel the card as soon as you can. Get a new card with a new PIN.

Checks
If your checks have been stolen or misused, close the account and ask your bank to notify the appropriate check verification service. While no federal law limits your losses if someone steals your checks and forges your signature, state laws may protect you. Most states hold the bank responsible for losses from a forged check, but they also require you to take reasonable care of your account. For example, you may be held responsible for the forgery if you fail to notify the bank in a timely way that a check was lost or stolen. Contact your state banking or consumer protection agency for more information.
You also should contact these major check verification companies. Ask that retailers who use their databases not accept your checks.

TeleCheck – 1-800-710-9898 or 927-0188

ChexSystems – 1-800-328-5121

SCAN (1-800-262-7771) to find out if the identity thief has been passing bad checks in your name.
File a report with your local police in the community where the identity theft took place.
Keep a copy of the report. You may need it to validate your claims to creditors. If you can’t get a copy, at least get the report number.
File a complaint with the FTC.
By sharing your identity theft complaint with the FTC, you will provide important information that can help law enforcement officials track down identity thieves and stop them. The FTC also can refer victim complaints to other appropriate government agencies and companies for further action. The FTC enters the information you provide into their secure database.
To file a complaint or to learn more about the FTC’s Privacy Policy, visit www.consumer.gov/idtheft. If you don’t have access to the Internet, you can call the FTC’s Identity Theft Hotline: toll-free 1-877-IDTHEFT (438-4338): TDD: 202-326-2502; or write: Identity Theft Clearinghouse, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20580.

Tips to Avoid Identity Theft

The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name printed on them. If someone takes your checkbook they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name but your bank will know how you sign your checks.
When you are writing checks to pay your credit card accounts, DO NOT write the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, write just the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won’t have access to it.
Print your work phone number on your checks instead of your home phone.
Never have your Social Security number printed on your checks. You can add the number if it is necessary, but if you have it printed, anyone has access to it.
Do not carry your Social Security card in your wallet or allow it to be used as your driver’s license number.
Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine and copy both sides of each license, credit card etc. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel.
Carry a separate photocopy of your passport when you travel either here or abroad.
Shred unused, pre-approved credit offers you receive in the mail. Also shred any discarded monthly statements.

What are Phishing and Pharming?

The FBI has identified "Phishing" – when criminals send fake e-mails requesting personal information – as one of newest and most disturbing Internet scams.

Criminals send legitimate-looking e-mails that appear to come from well-known sites like MSN, Yahoo and America Online with bogus requests for personal information like bank account information and credit card numbers. The messages often claim that billing information needs to be updated.

The FTC recommends the following steps to help avoid ‘phishing’ scams:

Don’t click on a link in an e-mail that warns your account will be shut down unless you reconfirm billing information. Contact the legitimate company using a phone number or Web address.
Look for a padlock icon that signals a site is secure before e-mailing personal and financial information and be sure to regularly review your credit card and bank statements for unauthorized charges.
Contact the FTC about SPAM at UCD@FTC.GOV.

Phishing attacks use both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers’ personal identity data and financial account credentials. Social-engineering schemes use ‘spoofed’ e-mails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. Hijacking brand names of banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, phishers often convince recipients to respond. Technical subterfuge schemes plant crime ware onto PCs to steal credentials directly, often using Trojan key logger spy ware.

Pharmers redirect as many users as possible from the legitimate commercial websites they’d intended to visit and lead them to malicious ones. The bogus sites, to which victims are redirected without their knowledge or consent, will likely look the same as a genuine site. But when users enter their login name and password, the information is captured by criminals.

The most alarming Pharming threat is DNS Poisoning, which can cause a large group of users to be redirected to bogus sites. The Domain Name System (DNS) translates web and e-mail addresses into numerical strings, acting as a sort of telephone directory for the internet. If a DNS directory is "poisoned" or altered to contain false information regarding which web address is associates with what numeric string, users can be silently redirected to bogus websites even if they type in the correct URL.

Consumer Advice: How to Avoid Phishing Scams

To learn more about Spy ware and how to protect against it click on the link below:
www.us-cert-gov

How to protect your computer

Please follow these links to learn more about how you can protect your computer from being compromised:
www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/before_you_plug_in.html
www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/default.mspx

To learn more about how important South Sound Bank thinks your information is, read our Privacy Policy.

After Hours Lost or Stolen VISA Debit Card

If you have lost or misplaced your debit card or think it may be stolen, please report it to your branch of account as soon as possible. You may reach our branches by going to the locations section of this website. Or after hours, you may report it to 1-800-554-8969.

Patriot Act

To help the government fight the funding of terrorism and money laundering activities, Federal law requires all financial institutions to obtain, verify, and record information that identified each person who opens an account. When you open an account, we will ask for your name, address, date of birth and other information that will allow us to identify you. We may also ask to see your driver’s license or other identifying documents.

Check 21 Disclosure

The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act or "Check 21" took effect October 28, 2004. The goal of "Check 21" is to reduce time, risk and costs associated with paper check processing.

Today when you write a check for payment, the check is physically transported between banks. "Check 21" allows banks to convert a check into an electronic image and use a "substitute check" in lieu of the original check. A substitute check is a paper copy of the digital image of your original check – both front and back, with all endorsements – and is about the size of a business check. All banks must accept the substitute check as they would the original document.

What is Check 21?

The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, or "Check 21", as it is most often referred to, is new federal legislation which permits any entity who processes a check to create a "substitute check" by taking a picture of the check you write and processing it electronically, rather than actually physically transporting the check. This results in an electronic version of your check, which will be regarded as the legal equivalent of the original check you wrote. The original check you wrote is then taken out of circulation. If at any point an actual physical check is needed, a paper printout of the electronic check image is made, resulting in a substitute check.

Check 21 does not require a bank to create substitute checks. Instead, the Act requires everyone to accept substitute checks as the legal substitute of the check you originally wrote.

What are the benefits of Check 21?

Congress passed Check 21 to facilitate easier, more rapid funds transfer, as physically transporting checks takes time and is expensive. Inclement weather, labor strikes, or other interruptions in the transportation system can significantly slow down the check processing system. Creating an electronic check image will bypass the need for physically sending the check back and forth. In many cases, the amount of time required to move money out of your account to pay the recipients of your check will be significantly reduced. The funds from checks you deposit may also be available sooner.

What do substitute checks look like?

Substitute checks are similar in size to original checks, with a slightly reduced image of the front and back of the original check. The front of a substitute check states: "This is a legal copy of your check. You can use it the same way you would use the original check." You may use a substitute check as proof of payment just like the original check. Images of substitute checks will begin to appear in your monthly account statement, as banks and other entities begin to create electronic substitutes of your checks.

What consumer protection and warranties are provided?

Check 21 has features to protect consumers in case of discrepancies. A bank that truncates your check must warranty that the substitute check is accurate, and that the original check will not be processed in addition to the substitute check. If you believe your check was processed twice, or was processed for the wrong amount, Check 21 provides specific recrediting rights, which are outlined below.

What are my rights under Check 21?

The following paragraphs describe rights you have when you receive substitute checks from us. The rights in this notice do not apply to original checks or to electronic debits to your account. Those rights are outlined under other laws with respect to those transactions, as described in the South Sound Bank Deposit Account Agreement and disclosure booklet. For the purposes of Check 21, the following laws apply.

Federal Law provides a special procedure that allows you to request a refund for losses you suffer if a substitute check is posted to your account and you think that we withdrew the wrong amount from your account or that we withdrew money from your account more than once for the same check. The losses you may attempt to recover under this procedure may include the amount that was withdrawn from your account and fees that were charged as a result of the withdrawal (for example, bounced check fees). You are entitled to interest on the amount of your refund if your account is an interest-bearing account. If your loss exceeds the amount of the substitute check, you may be able to recover additional amounts under the law.

We Respect Your Privacy

At South Sound Bank, the basis of each customer relationship is trust. Our customers have chosen to do business with South Sound Bank, and we are obligated to honor that relationship with great care, beginning with the information our customers entrust us with. We strongly believe that our customers’ privacy should not be compromised.

We do NOT disclose any information about you to anyone, except as permitted by law. Examples of this might include disclosures necessary to service your account or prevent unauthorized transactions.

Collection and Use of Information On Our Website

We recognize and respect your need for privacy and security as you visit our site. As you visit our site, you do so without telling us who you are and without revealing any personal information. Visitors to South Sound Bank’s website will remain anonymous. We do not collect personal identifying information about visitors unless you provide that information to us.

While we do not collect identifying information about visitors to our site, we do use standard software to collect information for the purpose of tracking activity on our site. Our software collects non-identifying information about visitors to the site, such as date and time visited, IP address, city, state and country. This information is used to compile statistics on site usage.

In the normal course of business, we do not ask for your name or personal information while you are visiting this site. However, if we ask you to supply us with personal information and you do so, we may retain that information. For example, your information may be retained by our institution when you:

Provide us with an e-mail address in order that we may respond to you.
Answer online questionnaires – a service we may provide to improve our services.
Provide us with information in response to an online promotion or contest.
Request a call, mailing or electronic response concerning our financial products and services.

E-mail

We collect and keep the contents of e-mail you send us in addition to your contact address and our response. This enables us to respond to your requests and questions. E-mail to us should be used for inquiries that are not sensitive or confidential as regular, non-encrypted Internet e-mail (the e-mail we use on most of the site) is not secure. If we need information beyond your name, address, e-mail address and phone number, we may contact you for further instruction.

Children

South Sound Bank feels that it is extremely important to guard the identity and privacy of children, and we encourage parents to supervise their interactions online. We do not intentionally market to or solicit personal information from children under the age of 13. In the event that we receive personal information from a child whom we know to be under 13, we will only use that information to respond directly to that child or seek parental consent.

For more information on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), you can visit the Federal Trade Commission site at www.ftc.gov.

Information We May Share

We may disclose personal information about our customer or former customers to our third parties as permitted by law. As to third parties, this may include disclosing information to assist in servicing and processing your loan or deposit account, in response to subpoenas, to credit bureaus and others.

Internet Banking > User ID/Password

When you are in our Online Banking Service, we will verify your identity by the use of a Confidential User ID and Password. We will treat any information about your transactions that we receive through your use of our Online Banking Service in accordance with our general Privacy Policy that is provided to all of our customers.

What is a Cookie?

A cookie is a very small text file sent by a web server and stored on your hard drive, your computer’s memory, or in your browser so that it can be read back later. Cookies are a basic way for a server to identify the computer you happen to be using at the time. Cookies are used for many things from personalizing start up pages to facilitating online purchases. Cookies help sites recognize return visitors and they perform a very important function in secure Internet banking.

Our service provider uses cookies simply to facilitate the customization and personalization of our website. For your security, our service provider does not store any personally identifiable information in cookies; which are further described below.

Website Cookies

When you register on our website and select the "Remember Me" checkbox our service provider sends a cookie to your hard drive, which enables you to customize the website and bypass the login process each time you revisit. These cookies are retained on your computer until you either delete them or click on the logout link within the website. These cookies only contain a unique user identification number and do not contain or collect any personally identifiable information.

When registered users login to the website, our service provider may also send cookies called "per-session" cookies or "server-side" cookies. These cookies reside in the browser and are only used to monitor the session by a unique identification number. These cookies are used for security purposes and you must allow your browser to accept these cookies in order to use the website. These cookies are destroyed after eight hours. When you click on advertisements in our website or advertisements on linked 3rd party web sites, you may receive another cookie. You do not have to accept these cookies to visit the website.

Pop-up Advertisements

Pop-ups are the advertisements that "pop-up" in a separate browser window. When you click on some of these pop-ups, it’s possible that you’re also downloading "spy ware" or "adware".

Sometimes, criminals create pop-up ads that look like they come from a respected financial institution and ask you to enter personal financial information, but most financial institutions including South Sound Bank will never ask you to verify personal financial information in pop-ups.

When unwanted pop-up windows appear, the best thing to do is immediately close any pop-up ad window. Do not enter information or respond in any way. We also recommend that you activate a pop-up blocking tool. There are many companies that offer pop-up blocking software, and many Internet browser companies are staring to integrate pop-up blocking tools into the newer versions of their products.

Security

South Sound Bank and its service providers have developed strict policies and procedures to safeguard your personal information. We restrict employee access to your sensitive personal information to a "need to know" basis. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your non-public personal information. We educate our employees about the importance of confidentiality and customer privacy. We take appropriate disciplinary measures to enforce employee privacy responsibilities.

Linking to Another Website

When you use a hyperlink to visit the website of another person or entity, you leave the Bank’s website. The content, accuracy and opinions expressed in other links provided by these resources are not investigated, verified, or endorsed by the Bank. You may be asked to provide personal information by operators of other websites you visit. These website operators may also collect information through the use of cookies. Information collected by other website operators may be used by them in accordance with the website operator’s policies and procedures. If you have any questions about the website and how they might use your personal information, you should review the websites privacy policy.

Questions

We hope you find our website useful and informative. We are always willing to answer questions and receive suggestions. If you have either, please e-mail us at custserv@southsoundbank.com. Please do not send us any sensitive information such as account numbers, your social security number, user identification numbers or passwords through general e-mail. Please provide us with this type of information by writing to us at PO Box 12720, Olympia WA 98508, or call us at 360-705-4200 or 360-528-4200.

Site Disclaimer

This web site contains material for information purposes only. The transmission and receipt of information on this web site does not form or constitute any formal relationship or contract with South Sound Bank.

Persons receiving information contained on this web site should not act upon the information without seeking professional advice. Any links to other web sites are provided only for the purpose of convenience and do not constitute a referral or endorsement of any linked site or its owner.

South Sound bank is not responsible for the contents of any linked site or any link contained in the linked site, or any changes or updates to such sites.

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