Phishing

McHenry Savings Bank would like to warn its electronic banking customers about a growing Internet mail scam commonly known as "Phishing". Phishing occurs when malicious individuals send out thousands of bogus emails that look like legitimate businesses or organizations. These emails usually request confidential financial information such as PINs, account numbers, Social Security numbers, user names, or passwords. The emails may also contain a link to a phony website that may look similar to ours, and would ask for confidential information. The criminals then use the newly obtained confidential information to steal a person's identity or to access a customer's account.

Pharming

Similar in nature to e-mail phishing, pharming seeks to obtain personal or private (usually financial related) information through domain spoofing. Rather than being spammed with malicious and mischievous e-mail requests for you to visit spoof Web sites which appear legitimate, pharming 'poisons' a DNS server by infusing false information into the DNS server, resulting in a user's request being redirected elsewhere. Your browser, however will show you are at the correct Web site, which makes pharming a bit more serious and more difficult to detect. Phishing attempts to scam people one at a time with an e-mail while pharming allows the scammers to target large groups of people at one time through domain spoofing.

Although McHenry Savings Bank has not been a victim of this scam, we believe it prudent to warn our customers about this fraudulent practice. McHenry Savings Bank never solicits confidential customer information by email or by telephone. If you receive a "Phishing" e-mail sent under our name, please forward it to customerservice@mchenrysavings.com.

Be assured that McHenry Savings Bank takes every precaution to protect our valued customers' confidential information.

IMPORTANT EMAIL NOTICE: Because there is a small risk that information transmitted via the Internet email could fall into the wrong hands, we suggest that confidential information, such as account number or social security numbers, not be transmitted via email. Instead please contact us directly at 815-385-3000 .