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Don’t Let Fraudsters Smish and Vish You—Confirm Who’s Calling or Texting

Delta Community will never ask you for a password or PIN by email, text or phone call. If someone tries to get that from you, hang up immediately and contact our Member Care Center via our toll-free number at 800-544-3328 or locally at 404-715-4725.

To enhance your personal security it’s important that you always verify who is contacting you by email, text and phone calls, and don’t share private information with anyone you can’t verify, because if you’re not careful you could get smished and vished! So what do smish and vish mean?

Smishing is an attack that uses text messaging on smartphones. Similar to email phishing scams (phishing involves fraudulent emails that look like they are from real, well-known companies; the emails try to steal passwords and credit card numbers), smishing messages generally include a threat to convince the potential victim to click a link, call a number or reply via text and then share sensitive information. Clicking links may take you to a fraudster’s website to enter in your confidential information or it may offer to download and install some software to infect your phone to steal your information and/or identity. So don’t respond to a text asking a question and don’t click on a text link if you can’t prove who the text is from!

Vishing (voice + phishing = vishing) is a different type of attack that occurs by a phone call rather than email. If you respond to a smish attack, then you may get a follow-up phone call—a vish attack. If someone calls asking you to provide confidential information about your accounts, disconnect the call!

Again, if you're ever in doubt, hang up and call our Member Care Center to verify the request. For more information, visit the Federal Communications Commission's site on Caller ID Spoofing.