Protecting Your Information

Alert: It has come to our attention that fraudulent e-mails were distributed from online.banking@peoplesbancorp.com to random e-mail addresses in our market area directing Peoples Bank clients to change their online banking passwords. Please be aware Peoples Bank did not send this communication. Additionally, Peoples Bank does not ask you to verify or change your password through a solicitation such as this. An example of this email is shown below. If you received this email and changed your password through the email link, please contact the Customer Care Center immediately at 800-374-6123 option 0 or by email to online_banking@peoplesbancorp.com.

Note: The fraudulent request to change your password would have come through your email on June 17, 2009 and not through the Peoples Bank website or online banking.

Example #4

The subject line may read:

Subject: Update your information

Dear Customer,

Your online banking password has expired. Our security system automatically expires all passwords after 90 days. This security measure is to secure your accounts from unauthorized access and fraudulent transactions via online banking. The steps below will guide you on how to create a new and more secure password:

Click here to change your password (Link removed from example)

Six essential elements of password security:

Do not tell anyone your password.
Do not write your password down anywhere.
(Except temporary passwords that you change immediately)
Make your password easy for you to remember but hard for someone else to guess.
If you think there is even a chance someone else might know your password, change it.
Change your password periodically, even if you think nobody knows it.
Make sure no one is watching when you enter your password.

A secure password is:

at least 8 characters long — longer is better

composed of three of these character classes:

lower-case letters: abcd...

upper-case letters: ABCD...

numeric: 1234...

non-alphanumeric: !@#$<,"...

Please change your password (Link removed from example)

Sincerely,
Peoples Bancorp

Note: Never send personal information via email.

These emails are NOT from Peoples Bank and responding to these emails with your account information could lead to financial losses or identity theft. Peoples Bank does not request personal information on our clients via email. Please contact Customer Care by phone or email if you are suspicious about email requests regarding your financial account information.

Return to Consumer Alert