• Your Password – We’ll ask you to develop a secret password that only you will know. Only then will you be able to review personal information about your account.
• Our Privacy Policies – Our entire staff is dedicated to protecting the personal privacy of you, our customer. We have stringent privacy policies in place, and have instituted bank-wide measures to assure that they are strictly observed.
• Encryption Software – “encryption software” makes it possible to scramble a message between two parties (you and your bank), and this “scrambling” protects your account information so it can’t be intercepted and read by a third party.

Our policy regarding E-mail
We will not ask for account information via E-mail. If you do receive an E-mail purporting to be from Guaranty Savings Bank asking for confidential account information, please contact us immediately at (504) 457-6220 and tell us. We may request a photocopy of the E-mail, or we may ask you to forward it to an E-mail address that we give you.

Of course, if you initiate contact by sending us an E-mail with a question about Online Banking (the only subject for which we accept an E-mail), we may respond to your question by E-mail.

Online Security
Security Alerts:

• Phishing
• Pharming
• Website spoofing
• Spyware

Phishing is a fraudulent scheme of sending an E-mail to a user claiming that the sender is a legitimate company. Typically, the E-mail attempts to trick the user into giving private information, such as an account number, a social security number, or a credit or debit card number, by directing the user to another web site, where he is asked to complete a form to update his personal information. The Web site, however, is designed only to steal the user's personal information.
Since we do not initiate contact by E-mail, you will never receive from Guaranty Savings Bank an E-mail asking you to update your personal information with us. If you do receive such an E-mail, contact us immediately at (504) 457-6220. You can also report fraudulent E-mail to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by forwarding the E-mail to uce@ftc.gov.

Pharming refers to the misdirection of an individual to an illegal Web site. For example, if you receive an unsolicited e-mail from your bank asking you to click on the link to direct you to their website, this may be “pharming”. It will send you to a phony site and in turn get you to provide personal information.

Web-site spoofing- is a method of creating imitation Web sites that look similar, if not identical, to an actual site. Individuals who are the victims of phishing or pharming are usually misdirected to these websites. At these illegitimate sites is where the individuals will be asked for personal account information. This may lead to identity theft or fraud.

Spyware – a form of software that collects personal and confidential information about a person or organization without their proper knowledge or informed consent, and reports to a third party. Many firewall and anti-virus software packages do not protect computers from spyware.

Spyware can be installed through the following methods:

• Downloaded with other Internet downloads
• It is installed when a user simply visits a Web Site
• Automatically downloaded when users opens or views unsolicited e-mail messages

Prevention:

• Use caution when downloading software. Make sure it is from a trusted source.
• Maintain software patches
• Install and configure firewalls to monitor inbound and outbound traffic
• Scan all e-mail for SPAM
• Block pop-ups
• Keep anti-virus definitions current
• Ensure the URL address is correct
• Make Guaranty Savings Bank a Favorite (www.guarantysb.com)
• Never click on a link in an email. Open up your browser and type in the web-site address.
• Never open an e-mail attachment from someone you do not know.
• Be careful of executable (.exe) file attachments.
• Always logout or close your browser