The first line of defense against phishing is education. Make sure you know what phishing is and how to protect yourself.

**If you only take away one piece of advice from this article it should be to never provide personal account or password information in response to an unsolicited email. Veridian does not and will not request personal information via email.**

Phishing is the most common type of email scam. A phishing email is made to look like it's coming from a business alerting you to member/customer account problems and requesting personal verification information.

The main purpose of a phishing email is to trick the consumer into revealing personal information such as their credit or debit card numbers, checking account information, Social Security numbers, or online banking passwords, in reply to an email or through a fake Web site.

If you receive an email that appears to be from your financial institutions or card issuer requesting personal information, be wary.

• Proceed with caution and treat the email with suspicion
• Do not reply to or click on any links within the email
• Contact your financial institution or card issuer, whoever the email appears to be from, to report the suspicious email.

The security measures in Online Banking help safeguard your accounts from phishing attacks. With Identity Check, even if the Internet thieves obtain your username and password from a phishing email, they will not gain access to your accounts.