Reduce Your Fraud Risk

Businesses, from large corporations to small “Mom and Pop” stores, are targets for a variety of illegal schemes. Here are some tips and suggestions to help you better protect your identity, accounts, and online activities.

• Follow safe computing practices. Read more about internet and computer security.
• Review your account activity daily. Immediately notify American AgCredit of any unauthorized transactions by calling 888.412.5759. Learn more about reporting fraud.
• Regularly review who has online access to your accounts to ensure authorized users are current.
• Store new and cancelled checks in a safe location.
• Guard your financial or other account information. Don’t provide it to anyone unless there is a legitimate reason to do so as part of a transaction, and only after you’ve confirmed this with the requestor.
• Carefully review any email messages seeking your personal information such as login ID, password or PIN. American AgCredit will never ask you for your password or other private information via email.
• Educate your employees on how to spot fraud scams. Encourage them to verbally confirm any unusual email request for an outgoing wire transfer, even if it appears to be from a company executive.
• Confirm any request for change to a vendor’s payment information by phone call to a known vendor representative.
• Require high-dollar invoices received electronically to be authenticated by phone call to the vendor prior to payment. For those received by mail, authenticate by phone or email. Communicate only to the phone numbers, email addresses, and contact names in your master vendor files.
• If you use a free email service for your business (such as Hotmail®, Gmail®, Yahoo®, etc.) make sure no confidential information is stored in contact records or saved messages such as account numbers, passwords, or PINs. Alternatively, consider upgrading to a secure email system.