At Walled Lake Schools Federal Credit Union, we take fraud seriously, and work hard to protect our members from scams. With the inception of AI, scams are starting to become more sophisticated and occur with higher frequency. Although we have not experienced an influx of fraud at WLSFCU, we want to be diligent and remind you of some helpful tips to keep your accounts safe and secure.

• Never share your usernames, passwords, or PIN numbers. There is no reason any legitimate person or business will ask for this information.
• Never share your debit card with anyone. If you share your debit card with someone they can easily continue to use it without your authorization. Every person on an account is issued their own debit card. Sharing a debit card is a violation of the cardholder agreement, and you are still liable for transactions when you share your debit card with someone else. Never share debit cards with anyone. 
• If someone is claiming to be contacting you on behalf of a family member, colleague or business, terminate the conversation and call that person back at the number you have for them to validate if it’s really who they say they are. 
• Monitor your accounts diligently. Review your statements and check your online banking periodically to make sure no unauthorized transactions have occurred. If something isn’t right, contact us immediately.
• Call us and set up a password for your account. We can add a password to your account that would hinder identity thieves from accessing your account.
• Set up a password with your own family. If someone is contacting you pretending to be a family member or representing a family member, you can ask them for your family password to verify it’s not a scam.
• Make sure to set up alerts on your plastic. We use Card Valet for Debit and EZ Card Info for Credit Cards.
• Never respond to suspicious emails/phone calls/text messages. Just delete them.
• If anyone is asking you for gift cards, it is a scam. Avoid all requests from strangers asking for gift cards for any reason. 
• Ask yourself if donation requests are legitimate. When disasters happen, fraudsters will increase their efforts to scam people for fake donations.
• Don’t believe promises of money, prizes or love. These scams are common in email and social media, and the best thing to do with them is delete them. 
• Keep your devices updated. Failure to update your devices is equivalent to leaving your home for the weekend with the windows open and the doors unlocked.
• Review your credit reports. You are entitled to a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months from each of the three major credit bureaus. You can order them all at once, or you may space them out and order one from each company every few months. You may do this at annualcreditreport.com or by calling 877-322-8228.

If you notice that your account has been compromised, or if you have questions about a message you’ve received, contact us immediately at 248-624-5222.