With the continued onslaught of fraudsters and identity thieves hiding behind every corner of the internet, Cybersecurity Month is the perfect time to reassess your financial security and make sure everything is in tip-top shape. Securing your payments is one such activity you can do this month to help fight off future scam artists.

Below, you’ll find our favorite tips and tricks to keep your payments—and your finances in general—safe and secure this October.

Always Enroll in Text Alerts

At Community Financial, we’re always looking for ways to bolster your financial security while streamlining the process itself. That’s why your Community Financial debit and credit cards are automatically enrolled in Fraud Text Alerts to keep your account safe. If you have cards elsewhere, make sure to inquire about text alerts—making it easy for your financial institution to check in with you about questionable account charges.

Go Digital (Securely)

Scammers are getting better and better at stealing card information, making the world of payments seem overwhelming and scary. However, you can safeguard your card information by utilizing Community Financial’s digital payment options.

Read more >>

Scammers never take a break from dreaming up new ways to con people out of their money. Recently, they’ve even been hijacking QR codes to pull scams on innocent victims. Here’s all you need to know about QR code scams and how to avoid them. 

What’s a QR code? 

Before we can explore the details of these scams, let’s understand what a QR code is and how one works. A QR code, which is an acronym for “Quick Response code,” is a square barcode that can be scanned using a smartphone and leads directly to a website or app. Businesses use QR codes for any number of reasons, from posting online menus, to scanning coupons, to processing payments, and more.

Read more >>

With 86% of the American population utilizing ATMs each year, it’s more important than ever to brush up on ATM safety. Unfortunately, scammers are everywhere—and using a compromised machine can mean risking identity theft and/or having cash stolen.

Here at Community Financial, we take our members’ safety very seriously. We use multiple protective measures to keep you, your information and your money safe when you use one of our ATMs. However, it’s important for you, as the member, to be aware of basic ATM safety so your transactions are never compromised. As with all banking platforms, you are the first and best defense for protecting your personal information and your money. Here are 10 tips to help you keep your ATM transactions completely secure.

Read more >>

With many families still working and attending school online from their homes, we are using more and more data. While the flexibility of being able to do so much from home is an amazing leap in communication technology, it also increases the possibility of our personal information getting into the wrong hands. The last thing you want at the end of the day is to find out your information has been stolen.

To protect you and your family while online, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission offers these tips:

Read more >>