'Privacy Week' Part of CU's Larger Differentiation Effort

U of C FCU will host its first-ever Privacy Week next week, with presentations to members by the local district attorney's office and a national consumer advocate, and an opportunity for members to bring sensitive documents for professional shredding.

The credit union has dedicated the week of Sept. 9 as Privacy Week as a means of educating members about how to protect their privacy in a globally wired community, which in turn helps promote the credit union's goal of becoming known as an unbiased resource that members of the community can turn to for good information and advice.

"This is part of an overriding plan we have to differentiate ourselves," said Rich Jones, VP-marketing. "When you look at what all the other financial institutions are doing, they're pretty much all doing the same thing. It's a different name, same pitch. We want to differentiate ourselves as a source of information for making good life choices, and not all of them are necessarily financial, though many are."

And privacy isn't simply a "hot topic" right now-it's been a very real issue for some of the CU's members already.

"We know of members who've had problems with this kind of thing. The fact of the matter is, identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes," Jones told The Credit Union Journal. "We've only just started the publicity for this, and the reservations (for some of the presentations) are already coming in."

"We are a SEG-based credit union that would like to be seen as a community- based credit union," Jones said.

The credit union's core sponsor is the University of Colorado.

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