Security

The South Financial Group is committed to maintaining your security and privacy while helping you bank the way you want. We use industry standard security techniques to ensure your personal financial information remains confidential.

Learn how The South Financial Group protects your information and how you can help prevent fraud or ID theft:

Online Banking Security
Safeguarding Customer Information
E-mail and Online Fraud
Steps You Can Take to Protect Your Information

Online Banking Security
Online Banking supports an Internet Explorer browser version 4.0 or higher. This browser version helps protect your personal financial information. However, if available, we recommend you use the latest version to ensure your transaction is as secure as possible. In addition, we maintain a firewall to prevent unauthorized entry to our systems. Data is transferred using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol. SSL uses a private code to encrypt data to prevent eavesdropping, tampering and message forgery. Online Banking pages will begin with “https” in the site address, alerting you to the SSL protection. Once you enter your User ID and Password and click the Log In button, your data is secured with SSL technology before it is transmitted.

Safeguarding Customer Information
The South Financial Group limits the sharing of your information to the necessary data needed to conduct business, provide quality service and offer other products and services that would meet your needs.

We are committed to protecting the confidentiality of customer information. Your privacy is considered in all aspects of our business. As such, we maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect customer information. We restrict access to customer information to only those employees with a business reason to know such information. All employees are bound by a code of ethics to protect the confidentiality of customer information and are trained to maintain a high level of confidentiality.

We do not share your information with third party vendors other than those acting on our behalf to process your banking information, and they are contractually obligated to maintain information security safeguards.

E-mail and Online Fraud
The most common types of e-mail fraud include e-mail messages sent to you for the purpose of stealing personal and financial information.

These e-mails claim to be from legitimate sources you use and trust, and try to entice you to provide different types of personal and confidential information including your online ID’s, passwords, Social Security number and bank account numbers.

This practice is also known as “phishing” or “spoofing”. Criminals commonly use this type of e-mail fraud to gain access to your existing accounts or to use your personal and financial information to open new accounts.

It is not easy to distinguish fraudulent e-mail messages.

Fraudulent e-mail messages try to obtain your personal information by asking you to reply directly to the e-mail or ask you to link to a phony Web site that appears legitimate. Regardless of the method used, you will be asked to provide personal, financial or account information.

You can identify bogus e-mails by looking for the following characteristics:

• Immediate Requests. These e-mails will often ask for an immediate response to the e-mail sent. For example, the message may tell you your account will be closed if you fail to confirm, verify or authenticate your personal information immediately.
• Typos and other errors. Fraudulent e-mails or Web sites may contain typographical or grammatical errors. The writing may also be awkward, stilted or inappropriate. The visual or design quality may be poor.

Steps you can take to protect your information
You can take additional precautions as a consumer to protect yourself from e-mail and online fraud. Here are just a few ideas to help:

• Your User ID and password are the keys to accessing your account. Don’t share your User ID and password with anyone that you don’t want accessing your account.
• You can help prevent security breaches by thoughtfully creating your password. If you already created a password, you can modify it by selecting the Personal Choices tab in Online Banking.
• Once you have a unique password, you need to protect it. Commit you password to memory, don’t write it down and don’t share it. When leaving Online Banking be sure to logoff. We also recommend you close your browser.
• Remember that creating phony Web sites and sending bogus e-mails is easy to do. Be cautious about the e-mails you reply to!
• Never click on a link in an e-mail message that asks you to provide sensitive personal, financial or account information.
• If you are asked to update or verify personal or account information, call us directly.
• If asked for personal or account information in an e-mail message, go directly to the company’s Web site. Open a new browser window, type in the Web Address and check to see if you must actually perform the task the e-mail may be asking you to do. This may include things like changing your password or opting for electronic statements.
• Never give out your account information or passwords to anyone.
• If you are concerned that you responded to a fraudulent e-mail or Web site, report the fraud immediately and change your passwords.
• Frequently monitor your account activity.
• Always sign off Web sites or secure areas of Web sites (for example, Internet Banking) for which you use an ID and password to enter.
• When your computer is not in use, shut it down or disconnect it from the Internet if you are not fully protected by a firewall.

Tips on creating unique passwords

• Choose a password that is easy to remember, so you do not have to write it down
• Do not share your password with anyone
• Use a combination of letters and numbers avoiding obvious personal information like birthdays or addresses
• Always sign off when you’re finished

If you have received a fraudulent e-mail or are a victim of identity theft, please call toll-free 866-345-9270 or e-mail.