Thursday afternoon, we experienced an IT system issue that impacted the real-time processing of some of our account information.  Though the issue was felt primarily on the teller lines at the branches, the posting of credits and debits were delayed for several hours.  There was little to no impact on check and card transactions.  Thank you for your patience throughout this process and for your continued membership at WECU.

The results of our Go Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Challenge are in and they are outstanding!  

If you’ve been following the story you’ll know that this year two WECU® employees issued a special joint challenge to WECU staff. 

Marketing Manager Kessa Volland and Accounts Control Manager Kari Olson told employees that if WECU® could reach $2,000 in donations Kessa would dye her hair pink, and if we were able to reach $4,000 Kari would as well. 

This year we raised a record breaking $2118.25 and met the first part of our Go Pink Challenge.  Kessa took the pink plunge and will be sporting her new do for an entire month. 

Thanks to all who donated, your generosity and enthusiasm made this a fun and successful fundraiser!      

Fraudsters are finding new ways to lure people into disclosing their personal and financial information.  While the style and type of information is constantly evolving, there are phishing scams that continue to affect credit unions and our members.

These scammers need your personal and financial information to put money into their pockets – regardless if the money comes from your savings, checking or loan accounts. Time and again, scammers are successful in identifying and targeting the weakest link to enable this crime.

The credit union industry continues to communicate the various types of phishing (email), smishing (text message), vishing (landline), VoIP (internet phones) and mail letter phishing scams. These tactics are working because members unfortunately continue to disclose their information. The following are phishing techniques that fraudsters are using to capture personal and financial information:
 
Scam:  Social Networks
Be wary of clicking any links in emails or accessing social networking sites for holiday themes such as Halloween upon us.  Holiday scams contain links that redirect you to an indirect site registered by the fraudster.

Prevention:  Close your browser if you see a link to download or install an application.

Scam:  Call Forwarding
Fraudsters call forward your landline or cell phone number to another telephone. In most cases, it’s a prepaid cell phone.

Prevention: Place a password on your telephone numbers to prevent them from being call forwarded.

Scam: Text Messaging
Fraudsters send a text message (smishing) asking for your personal information.

Prevention: If the text message requests personal or financial information, contact WECU® immediately and not respond to the text message.

Scam: System Intrusions
Fraudsters phish you in attempt to steal your account numbers, passwords and user names to get into your home banking.

Prevention: WECU® has implemented multifactor authentication to prevent fraudsters from gaining access to our system. Monitor your transaction activity daily to help identify any unauthorized activity - watch for unauthorized ACH or wire transfers. Never share your user names, passwords or account information.

Scam: Voice Vishing:
This scam attempts to trick you into providing personal and financial information over the phone. Most vishing scams begin with an email or text message asking you to call a toll-free number. When you call the number, you are led through a series of voice prompted menus that ask for key financial information such as a card or account and PIN.

Prevention: Do not call the telephone number. Rather, report this to WECU® and your telecommunications carrier immediately. This number needs to be shut down to help prevent others from responding to the attack.

Scam: Spoofing Caller ID: In this instance you receive a call from either a live person or a recorded message with a spoofed caller ID. The caller ID may list a legitimate looking telephone number. Fraudsters have spoofed caller ID systems or assign any area code to a phone number so it appears to be an 800 number or a local number.

Prevention: Never provide personal or financial information to the caller.  Hang up and contact WECU® to report this activity.

Email, text message and phone calling are various forms of phishing. Fraudsters are asking for other types of information beyond card information to steal money. Ongoing fraud education is critical since these types of attacks are not going away.  

During the recent Heartland Card Compromise, over 130 million card numbers were affected and many had fraud on them. Recently, three people were indicted for being involved. For more information click here.

Due to a large number of fraud cases and cardholder disputes we have blocked St. Kitts-Nevis, Iceland, Israel and Cyprus for all internet transactions.  In addition any merchant with the name ACAI, Colon Cleanse, Teeth Whitening (Bright), Oxi-Berry or Grant in the name has also been blocked.  Please contact WECU's Card Services Department at extension 7360 if you need to participate in a transaction that involves one of the aforementioned areas or merchants or if you would like any additional information.

Simple: E-statements are a breeze to set up and make it easy to store and locate your information when you need it. 

Secure: E-statements cut down on the amount of sensitive information members end up storing and shredding, limiting the possibility of document theft. 

Sustainable: why use paper unless you need it!  If you prefer that method still have the option of printing statements out at home but working together we can preserve precious resources for future generations.

When you sign up for E-statements, you receive an email alert which includes an electronic newsletter, notifying you that your statement is ready. Your statement is not sent via email but is actually stored inside E-Max, our online banking system.

To sign up for e-statements you will need to have a Max-Code. You can request a Max-Code in person or over the phone:

• Log in to E-Max,
• Click the ‘e-notify’ button,
• Click ‘yes’ to accept the Terms and Conditions and ‘submit’,
• Provide and verify a primary e-mail address (you will be sent an authorization code),
• Click the ‘subscribe’ button,
• Copy and paste the activation code that is sent to your email address into the next box,
• Click the ‘activate my address’ button,
• Click the ‘e-statements’ link at the top of the page,
• Click ‘agree’ and ‘submit’
• Click ‘ok’ twice

Next time you’re in the branch or on the phone take a moment to update your information with WECU. 

Do we have your current address?

Is your ID on file for account security?

Do we have your correct contact numbers? 

Do we have your email address? 

Would you prefer that we call you on your cell or at work? 

Do you know who your ‘payable on death’ beneficiary is? 

Are you headed anywhere on vacation and plan to use your WECU debit or credit card in the near future?

It only takes a few moments to update your information and it can save loads of time in the long run. 

In February, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This act provides a one-time payment of $250 to those who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Benefits.

Beginning in May and continuing through the month, everyone who is scheduled to receive the one-time payment should receive it by late May 2009. To make it easy on you, no action is required on your part and you will receive the payment in the same method you receive your normal Social Security benefits.

Thank you for your support!

For years WECU has been the go-to source for your consumer loan needs.  While we have already helped lots of our members with WECU Visas, personal loans or auto loans, many members are now turning to our growing real estate department for their real estate needs.  Our goal has always been to be a major part of your lives; from your first checking account to your first home, WECU wants to help you realize your financial goals and dreams.  Thank you for turning to WECU for your financial needs.  Thank you for recommending us to your friends and neighbors! 

According to a report from Rocky Mountain Statistics provided to WECU by a local title company, WECU is leading the way in both dollar amount and number of real estate loans in Whatcom County -and it is all because of you!

WECU has become the number one real estate lender in the county so far in 2009!  Way to go WECU Real Estate!!

WECU’s response to this threat:

You may have heard in recent news reports about a new virus-like computer worm, called “Conficker”, which has been infecting large numbers of computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

WECU uses a number of methods to automatically distribute patches and monitor all of our computers. An emergency patch was released by Microsoft on October 15, 2008 to deal with the flaw in the Windows operating system which was making Conficker’s spread possible. This patch was deployed to all of our computers on that day. Our Antivirus and anti spyware systems are constantly releasing updated virus and spyware definitions which are distributed to our computers as they become available. Each of WECU’s workstations is provided with real-time protection, as well as a complete nightly scan to assure our systems are clean of viruses, worms, and spyware.

As an added precaution, WECU IT staff performed additional maintenance and monitoring of our systems on the evening of March 31st and morning of April 1st in the event that any previous measures were unsuccessful.  There were no traces of Conficker present on any of our systems and there has been no impact to any of our services.

Background on Conficker:
Conficker first appeared in October 2008, and has since infected millions of computers worldwide. There are multiple variants of Conficker, with each new variant containing code to sidestep countermeasures taken to thwart the previous versions. The payload of the latest variant was disabled until April 1, 2009, at which time the worm was programmed to start attempting to “phone home” to its author to gain further instructions. Experts believe that these infected computers will begin to work together (in a system called a Bot-net) to carry out their payload.  As of the morning of April 1, there have been no reports of any network disruptions, data loss or an increase in spam related to the Conficker worm.

How Conficker spreads:
Low security networks
Memory sticks
PCs without current updates

Symptoms of infection include:
Certain Microsoft Windows services such as Automatic Updates, Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), Windows Defender and Error Reporting Services disabled.
Websites related to antivirus software becoming inaccessible. 

Information on how to protect yourself can be found on Microsoft’s web site and United States Department of Homeland Security.

Effective February 1st, 2009, the Overdraft Transfer by Computer Fee increased from $1.00 to $2.00 per transfer. If there are funds in your savings account, we will automatically transfer funds in increments of $100 to cover overdrafts. You may choose which savings account you want the transfer to come from. The $2.00 transfer fee will be charged for these automatic transfers.

WECU has not increased the Overdraft Transfer by Computer Fee in over 10 years.  As we are required to send you notification via mail when one of these transfers is made, we have increased this fee to cover the costs of staff time and the rising cost of postage.

In addition as of February 1st, 2009, we began charging $10 per check for Stop Payments on checks.

On April 1st, 2009, WECU will begin charging a $1 fee for each money order. For many years we were able to offer money orders with no fee to our members because we subsidized this product. Recently, the money order stock price increased to $0.70 per item. We therefore determined we could no longer subsidize this cost.

On April 1st, 2009, WECU will begin charging a $2 fee for each cashier’s check. However, we will still offer one free cashier’s check per month. Since most members who use cashier’s checks need only one a month, we believe this will take care of most members’ needs.

In addition, (as noted on your February statement), effective April 1st, 2009, the Annual Percentage Yield (APY) on Money Market accounts changed to 1.26% with a dividend rate of 1.25% and the Annual Percentage Yield on Check Plus changed to 0.10% with a dividend rate of 0.10%.

Please see our Rate and Fee schedule or talk to a WECU representative for additional information.

As noted in last month's newsletter, due to changing requirements with the Federal Reserve Bank, WECU will be clearing and returning checks through the Check 21 process beginning September 8, 2008. This means that checks you write from your WECU account will attempt to post to your account throughout the day - possibly clearing your account or being returned unpaid much faster than they were previously. To ensure that your checks are paid and no fees are assessed make sure that you have funds in your account to cover your check at the time the check is written.

WECU has several products and services available to help you track spending and keep on top of your account balance. If you haven’t already, check out E-Max (our online banking system), Tele-Max (our phone system) or check your balance at our ATMs, through the call center or face to face with one of our smiling tellers!

At WECU we consider it our mission to provide our members with legendary financial products and services in a financially safe and sound environment.  In order to protect you and your investments WECU is federally insured.

WECU’s insurance fund is well-capitalized, and we are regulated by the National Credit Union Administration, a U.S. Government agency.  The fund protecting Federally-insured credit unions is backed by the United States Government. The National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF) is:

• Exceptionally Strong: Federal reserves are more than adequate to insure your deposits. Not one penny of insured savings has ever been lost by a member of a Federally-insured credit union. 
• Growing to meet deposit growth:  Each year we adjust our contribution to the NCUSIF to reflect our growth. As savings grow, the fund grows to protect them.
• Insured by investment policies for continued safety and soundness:  As a Federally-insured credit union, we can only invest in federally approved institutions and in their members. We are prohibited, by law, from investing in risky ventures to increase profits.

Not only is WECU well insured, we are also well capitalized, which is your first line of protection. A credit union would only need to use insurance if our capital was depleted.  So, every time you make a transaction or visit your neighborhood WECU branch, take comfort in the fact that your money is safe with us!