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Preventing Online Fraud

What Is Online Fraud?

Online fraud is defined as a criminal intent to steal your personal and/or financial information for illicit use. People committing this kind of fraud employ a variety of methods to try and obtain this information, which may include the following:

Phishing

Phony emails or instant messages that appear to come from a trusted source and request that you either provide personal information by email, or link to a fraudulent website that asks you for this information. Generally speaking, the illicit website will try and collect all of your personal information on one page. Please keep in mind that when you log in with your User Name and Password, American Century Investments® will never ask you to provide your personal information to verify your account.

Malware (malicious software)

Software intended to infiltrate, monitor or damage individual computers, such as viruses, trojan horses, spyware, adware or keyloggers. This software is installed without the owner's knowledge or consent and can capture and send personal information to an external party.

How Can I Protect My Computer?

Although no method is foolproof, the following steps will help protect your system:

  • Install the latest patches for your operating system.
  • Use anti-virus and firewall software, which can be offered together in a suite. In addition, we also suggest you enable the feature that automatically updates this software. You can even take the added step of installing a hardware firewall, available at your local computer store.

Here is a list of security software vendors and their websites:

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