An executive of Regions Financial Corp., which just kicked off a financial fraud awareness campaign, says other bankers are not doing enough awareness-raising.
William E. Askew, Regions' executive vice president of consumer and business banking, said banks have been reluctant to publicize the prevalence of phishing and other scams for fear of weakening public trust.
But their silence could have a similar effect, he said. "If we don't do something about this as an industry, the consumer is going to lose, and they're going to lose their faith in the online banking system."
Regions, of Birmingham, Ala., is collaborating with First Data Corp. and the processor's Star debit network to issue a series of announcements, Mr. Askew said.
First Data, the nation's largest payment processor, will work at a national level and Regions will focus on its own service area. Barbara Span, a vice president of corporate relations at First Data, said the Denver company has not been able to sign up any other bank partners for the program that could work locally in other parts of the country.
Regions is "going out to consumers in their marketplace," Ms. Span said. "We need other financial institutions to do that as well."
Regions got started Tuesday with radio, television, and newspaper placements in the 15 states in the South and Midwest where it has branches under the Regions Bank and Union Planters names. It will help develop scripts and provide video clips that can be used to produce public service announcements.
"The most effective way to reach consumers is through the news media," Mr. Askew said.
A study commissioned by First Data and conducted in late 2004 by Synovate, the market research arm of the British advertising conglomerate Aegis Group PLC, found that 43% of U.S. consumers had received phishing e-mails from criminals and that 5% of those people gave up personal information, believing the request came from a legitimate business.
Phishing e-mails purport to come from a bank and direct people to a fake Web site where they are asked to reveal personal financial information that can be used in identity theft.
Only 50% of consumers surveyed reported receiving any information about phishing, Ms. Span said. Two-thirds of those people said they learned about the problem through the news media. Only 40% said they had received any information about it from a financial institution.
Two million identity theft cases in the past 12 months are directly attributable to criminals posing as legitimate businesses either by telephone or e-mail. In one-third of those cases the con artists posed as financial companies, Ms. Span said
"Financial institutions are singled out, to trade on the trust that consumers have," she said.
