Security & Fraud Prevention

This section has been created to provide the valuable customers of Hardin Bank important security information. Hardin Bank is committed to providing our customers with current information and warnings about fraud and/or identity theft. Although this is the latest information we have, new scams appear frequently. Please check this site from time to time for updates.

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Your Privacy

Hardin Bank does not solicit customers' information via phone, text or email messaging. Should you receive any solicitations requesting account information (i.e. Account number, Mastercard^® debit card number, PIN, etc.), do not respond. Please contact the Bank at 409-267-3106. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Helpful Resources

• Don’t Be an Online Victim: How to Guard Against Internet Thieves and Electronic Scams
• Identity Theft
• Phishing Scams
• Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Archive
• IdentityTheft.gov: Identity Theft Reporting and Recovery
• Federal Trade Commission
• Texas Fights ID Theft

Glossary

Advanced Fee Fraud / 4-1-9 Scheme

In this scheme, a company or individual will typically receive an unsolicited letter from an individual residing in a foreign country (usually Nigeria) and claiming to be a senior civil servant. The recipient is informed that his/her help is needed to transfer very large amounts of money to his/her bank. The recipient of the letter, in exchange for the assistance provided, is promised a percentage of the funds transferred, but a fee is required to begin the transaction.

Additionally, the victim may be tricked into providing access to his/her bank account, and into sending legal documents to the scammer. This type of fraud is also known as 4-1-9 Scheme, from the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes. 

E-mail Scams

E-mail scams are perpetrated through messages that appear to have been written by someone other than the actual source.

Phishing

The act of sending an e-mail to you falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam you into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs you to visit a Web site where you are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, Social Security and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal your information.

For example, 2003 saw the proliferation of a phishing scam in which you received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that your account was about to be suspended unless you clicked on the provided link and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay already had.

Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a legitimate organization's site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being contacted by eBay and were subsequently going to eBay's site to update their account information.

By spamming large groups of people, the "phisher" counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately. Phishing, also referred to as brand spoofing or carding, is a variation on "fishing", the idea being that bait is thrown out with the hopes that while most will ignore the bait, some will be tempted into biting. 

Other Forms of Phishing

• Spear Phishing: Where normal Phishing goes after a large group of people, Spear Phishing is specifically targeted toward a single individual.
• Vishing: A form of Phishing used over the phone, most commonly used to get credit card information from trusting individuals.
• Smishing: Similar to the other varieties of Phishing, Smishing uses SMS text messages to lure its victims. They often include a phone number or a Web site to get an individual to go there of their own volition, thereby making the process seem more legit.

Pharming

Similar in nature to e-mail phishing, pharming seeks to obtain personal or private (usually financial related) information through domain spoofing. Rather than being spammed with malicious and mischievous e-mail requests for you to visit spoof Web sites which appear legitimate, pharming "poisons" a server by infusing false information into the server, resulting in your request being redirected elsewhere. Your browser, however will show you are at the correct Web site, which makes pharming a bit more serious and more difficult to detect.

Phishing attempts to scam people one at a time with an e-mail while pharming allows the scammers to target large groups of people at one time through domain spoofing.

Spoofing

A technique used to gain unauthorized access to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a computer with an IP address indicating that the message is coming from a trusted host.

To engage in IP spoofing, a hacker must first use a variety of techniques to find an IP address of a trusted host and then modify the packet headers so it appears the packets are coming from that host. Newer routers and firewall arrangements can offer protection against IP spoofing.

Spyware

Spyware is any software that gathers your information through your Internet connection without your knowledge, usually for advertising purposes. Spyware applications are typically bundled as a hidden component of freeware or shareware programs that can be downloaded from the Internet. Once installed, the spyware monitors your activity on the Internet and transmits that information in the background to someone else. Spyware can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even passwords and credit card numbers.

Spyware is similar to a Trojan horse in that you unwittingly install the product when you install something else. A common way to become a victim of spyware is to download certain peer-to-peer file swapping products that are available today. Aside from the questions of ethics and privacy, spyware steals from you by using the computer's memory resources and also by eating bandwidth as it sends information back to the spyware's home base through your Internet connection. Because spyware is using memory and system resources, the applications running in the background can lead to system crashes or general system instability.

Because spyware exists as independent executable programs, they have the ability to monitor keystrokes, scan files on the hard drive, snoop other applications, such as chat programs or word processors, install other spyware programs, read cookies, change the default home page on the Web browser, consistently relaying this information back to the spyware author who will either use it for advertising/marketing purposes or sell the information to another party.

Licensing agreements that accompany software downloads sometimes warn you that a spyware program will be installed along with the requested software, but the licensing agreements may not always be read completely because the notice of a spyware installation is often couched in obtuse, hard-to-read legal disclaimers.

Trojan Horse

These are programs designed to appear as one thing, such as legitimate software, but actually will do something else. They are not necessarily malicious programs. A Trojan horse can be used to set up a back door in a computer system so that the intruder can return later and gain access. Viruses that fool you into downloading and/or executing them by pretending to be useful applications are also sometimes called Trojan horses.

Worm

Like a virus, a worm is also a self-replicating program. The difference between a virus and a worm is that a worm does not create multiple copies of itself on one system and that it propagates itself through computer networks.

After the comparison between computer viruses and biological viruses, the obvious comparison here is to a bacterium. Many people confuse the terms "virus" and "worm", using both to describe any self-propagating program. It is possible for a program to have the blunt characteristics of both a worm and a virus.

Virus

A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells.

Fraud Protection Center

Notify us if your checkbook or ATM/debit card has been lost or stolen.

1. Close the accounts that you know, or think have been tampered with or opened fraudulently. Contact Hardin Bank about this process.
2. Report the theft to local law enforcement authorities, and request a copy of the theft report to provide to Hardin Bank.
3. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission online at IdentityTheft.gov or call toll-free 877-IDTHEFT (438-4338); for the hearing-impaired, call 866-653-4261.

Place a fraud alert in your credit file with any of the three major credit reporting bureaus.

Credit Reporting Agencies

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