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 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is Multi-Factor Authentication? Multi-Factor Authentication provides you added safety by helping ensure that only you can access your credit union account. Your log-in picture and caption is a shared secret between you and the credit union. When you see your log-in picture, you can be confident that you are at First Community FCU’s actual PCU Home banking site, not an imposter site. Make sure that you see your log-in picture before you enter your password. In addition, Multi-Factor Authentication remembers which computer(s) you normally use, preventing potential fraudsters from logging into your account even if they somehow get hold of or guess your username and password. 2. Why Do I need Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)? MFA is an enhanced security feature that helps protect you while you access your online account. On the internet today, fraudsters attempt to steal your identity by impersonating the web sites you trust. We are committed to proactively protecting you, our member, against such attacks. MFA helps us do this. When you visit your branch office, you know our faces and we know yours. MFA does the same thing over the internet. It is a new method to identify us to you and you to us. When you enroll in MFA, you will select a secret log-in picture and caption known only to you. Whenever you log-in we will show you this picture so you can rest assured that you are accessing the real First Community FCU home banking site and not an imposter site. We will also check the computer(s) or device(s) that you are using to access the site. Typically you will access the site from one or two computers, such as your work and home machine. MFA remembers your computer. Should you need to log-in from a different computer, such as an internet café, we will take additional steps to verify your identity, such as ask you to provide the answer to secret questions to which you’ve established answers. MFA remembers your computer by assigning a unique identifier to each computer you use to access our web site using standard secure cookies. The cookie is used to store the identification information only. No personal or private data is stored in any way. 4. How is Multi-Factor Authentication more secure? MFA protects you from accidentally revealing your username and password to a fake site. In addition, if someone does somehow get your username and password, he will still not be able to access your account because he is not at your registered computer. 5. What keeps somebody from stealing my MFA log-in picture? We only show you your log-in picture and caption if you log-in from your own computer, or after you have answered a secret question. So, it is not possible for an unauthorized person to get access to your picture. 6. Why am I being asked a question when I try to log-in? We ask you a secret question when we detect that you are trying to log-in from a new computer. This is to prevent someone with stolen passwords from logging into your account. Since only you know the answer to the questions, we will know it’s really you. Generally you will be asked to answer a secret question only when you log-in for the first time from a new computer. After you answer the question, you will be asked whether we should remember this computer for future log-ins. If you are using a personal computer, you should answer “yes”. If you are using a public terminal, you will want to answer “no”. 7. Can I access my account from multiple computers? Yes, you can still access your First Community FCU account from any number of computers. If you log-in from a new computer or public terminal, you will just need to go through one extra step of answering a secret question. This helps protect you by keeping unauthorized people from accessing your valuable information. There is no limit on how many different computers you can use to log-in to your credit union account. 8. I am not an internet expert. How easy is this to use? MFA is extremely simple for anyone to use. You don’t need to memorize anything new – just use the site as usual and look for your MFA log-in picture. 9. I share my computer with someone who has their own credit union account. Can both of us still log-in from this machine? Yes, you can both use the same computer to log-in to your individual credit union accounts. There is no limit on how many people can log-in into the credit union home banking site from the same computer. 10. What happens if someone steals my password? How will Multi-Factor Authentication keep them from accessing my account? When someone tries to log-in using your stolen user name and password, we will recognize that they are logging in from a different computer, and ask them a secret question. Since only you know the answers to your secret questions, they will not be able to give a correct answer. They will not be able to log-in. 11. Can I change my log-in picture and caption? Yes, you can change your log-in picture and caption at any time. To make the change, go to the account maintenance link after you log-in to your account. 12. How do you know I am logging in from my own computer? When you log-in for the first time from a new computer, we put a secure (encrypted) cookie on your computer. This cookie contains a randomly generated unique number that identifies your computer. The cookie is visible only to the credit union web site and does not contain any of your personal information. When you log-in after that, your web browser sends us this cookie. This lets us know that this is your computer. Recently there have been attempts by fraudsters to trick people into revealing their personal information, such as passwords, by creating fake web sites that look very much like the sites of legitimate financial institutions. They send out emails randomly with links to fake web sites. This phenomenon has been called Phishing (pronounced “fishing”). 14. I am trying to log-in from my own computer, but the credit union’s site is not showing me my MFA log-in picture. Instead, it’s asking me a question. What is happening? This might happen in rare cases if you have deleted all cookies on your computer. Before answering a secret question or entering your password, make sure that you are going to the legitimate credit union website. The easiest way to ensure this is by typing in the URL of First Community Federal Credit Union (www.1stcomm.org) directly into your web browser. Then, after you answer the security question, you should see your secret MFA log-in picture next to the password field. If your log-in picture is there, you can be confident that you are at the legitimate site and can enter your password. 15. What is a Trojan or Key Logger? Some fraudsters have been putting programs on random computers in order to harvest your user id and password information used to log-in to web sites. They collect this information and secretly transmit it to their own computers and attempt to log-in to your site. These are called Trojans (short for Trojan Horse) or Key Loggers (for logging your keystrokes). 16. How does Multi-Factor Authentication protect me from a Trojan or Key Logger? Once you have a MFA log-in picture and have registered your computer, even if a fraudster steals your log-in ID and password, his computer will not be registered and he will not be able to log-in as you; thus, MFA protects your identity and your First Community FCU account. |
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