Holiday Shopping Best Practices

At Community Trust Bank, our first priority is protecting your identity and personal information. As you look forward to Holiday shopping you can feel confident when making purchases with Community Trust Bank's comprehensive security protection. Your Community Trust Bank fraud team is prepared for the 2023 holiday fraud season and encourage our customers to do the same. As we vigilantly monitor ongoing and emerging fraud trends and look ahead to what the upcoming holiday buying season will have in store for our customers we would like to provide you with some tips to help avoid holiday scams and protect your identity as you shop.

• Stay alert when receiving texts or phone calls from random numbers
• Check phone numbers from the actual store, financial institution, or delivery website. In addition, verify a suspicious caller by hanging up and calling a number from the website of the supposed organization.
• Do not click any links from texts you randomly receive
• Take any questions regarding orders or deliveries you conducted to the phone number from the company website or from the initial confirmation email you received after placing the order
• You should never reveal one-time passcodes to anybody when you have not initiated transactions or inquiries occurred.
• AI Voice creation has come a long way in the last year. If you receive a phone call from a family member who is in immediate danger and they are requesting a ransom or personal information, please attempt to call your family member or other individuals involved with this family member to be sure they are safe.
• Urgent and Authoritative behavior are common fraud techniques used to make the victim fall into a state of fear or anxiety.
• Only use legitimate sites when shopping online (when an offer is too good to be true, it probably is.)
• You should always use a secure network
• Be leery of skimmers (use Contactless Purchasing whenever possible.)
• Limit what information you share online. Your security questions associated with your accounts can be guessed with personal clues you may have shared.
• Always review and check your statements and credit reports. Consider a Credit Monitoring Service
• Keep an eye on your mailbox during the holidays and shred any credit card, bank, or investment statements, including junk mail such as pre-approved offers for credit.
• Using different secure passwords on your financial websites, social media apps and your mobile devices is a great way to prevent you becoming victims. 

We hope these tips will help guide you safely through the holiday shopping season.