Dear Customers and Friends, 

I would like to take this opportunity to educate you about Phishing (FISH.ing). Phishing is the act of sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be a legitimate company. The email fraudulently attempts to deceive customers into disclosing credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information that could later be used for identity theft. The term Phishing comes from the fact that scammers use sophisticated "lures" to "fish" for financial information or password data. Bait, as it were, in the form of high jacked logos and website HTML code is thrown out in emails with the knowledge that someone will be tempted to bite by responding. Those that respond are directed to websites that look nearly identical to the companies that are targeted. I personally have received fraudulent emails from someone imitating EBAY, CITIBANK, and the FDIC. All of these companies had websites that told of the fraud and how to identify it. Please report every scam you receive to the company that is being imitated and to the Federal Trade Commission.

The most important thing that you can do to prevent being a victim of any type of scam is to be restrictive with your personal information. Verify, through personal contact (initiated by you), the accuracy of any request you receive from anyone in an email. Please know that Gruver State Bank would never request any such information from our customers in an email. I hope this information has been helpful to you. Please call me if I can be of service and, as always, I appreciate you.