Information from Bank of America Merchant Services
to Help Protect your Account from Unauthorized Access

Best Practices to help prevent unauthorized account access


Online Phishing

Online phishing is an attempt to trick someone into providing sensitive information (such as financial account numbers, login names, and passwords) online.

Phony web sites or email messages that look as if they were sent from your financial institution are used to fool someone into entering sensitive information.

Please be aware these fake solicitations can be very sophisticated and look authentic.

If you ever receive a suspicious email that appears to have been sent by Bank of America Merchant Services, do not respond or click on any of the links, and immediately contact Customer Service.



Email Best Practices

The best prevention against phishing is to be defensive:

  • Never respond to an email requesting sensitive information

  • Never click on links sent to you to go to your online accounts

  • Always navigate directly to the websites by entering the URL in your browser

  • When you do need to enter information, be sure to check the site's security certificate to make sure it uses Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (identified by the prefix "https")



Password Protection Best Practices

Another aspect of information protection is to ensure you are using best practices for passwords:

  • All passwords related to access to computers, all systems, servers, firewalls, routers and all user accounts should be complex and not easy to guess (e.g., mix of letters, numbers, and symbols)

  • Change any vendor supplied default passwords immediately

  • All passwords should be changed frequently (every 30-90 days)