Credit 101

Fraud Protection

Our customer fraud protection promise.

We promise to do everything possible to protect your credit card from fraud:

Protect –
We employ a suite of fraud protection tools to minimize the chance of fraud occurring on your credit card account.
Monitor –
We watch over your credit card account, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Resolve –
The truth is that fraud does happen, but if it should ever happen to you we'll work hard to help make it right. Remember, you're covered by our $0 Fraud Liability policy, which means that if your credit card is lost or stolen and used without your authorization, you will not be liable for those charges.

What is Phishing?

E-mail fraud, or “phishing”, is an Internet scam in the form of an e-mail. The e-mails link to sites that look like well-known legitimate businesses and ask you to provide or confirm personal, financial, or password information.

E-mail Fraud Topics

How to Report Fraudulent E-mails

If you believe you have received a fraudulent e-mail, please forward the entire e-mail with the original subject line to abuse@capitalone.com.

If you have provided personal information or clicked on the links in a fraudulent e-mail, follow these additional steps:

  1. Call us immediately to report that account information may have been compromised.
  2. Log in to Capital One Online Banking and change your password and security questions.
  3. Check your accounts for suspicious activity.
  4. Update and run your antivirus software on your computer.

How to Spot Suspicious E-mails

There are many telltale signs of a fraudulent e-mail.

  1. Sender’s e-mail address. To give you a false sense of security, the “From” line may include an official-looking e-mail address that may actually be copied from a genuine one. E-mail addresses can easily be spoofed, so just because it looks like it’s from someone you trust, you can’t always be sure.
  2. Attachments. Similar to fake links, attachments can be used in fraudulent e-mails. Never click on or open an attachment. It could cause you to download spyware or a virus. Capital One will never e-mail you an attachment or a software update to install on your computer. In general, never open unexpected attachments from anyone.
  3. Generic greeting. A typical fraudulent e-mail will have a generic greeting, such as “Dear Account Holder.”
  4. False sense of urgency. Most fraudulent e-mails threaten to close your account or assess some penalty if you don’t respond right away. An e-mail that urgently requests you to supply sensitive personal information is typically fraudulent.
  5. Typos and grammatical mistakes. Errors like these are a clear sign the e-mail is fraudulent.
  6. Treat all links in e-mails as potentially unsafe. Many fraudulent e-mails have a link that looks valid, but sends you to a fake site that may or may not have a URL different from the link. As always, if it looks suspicious, don’t click it.

If you get an e-mail that claims to be from us but you aren’t sure, or you think it’s suspicious, don’t click any of the links. Just send it to us at abuse@capitalone.com then delete it.

Sample of a Fraudulent Phishing E-mail

How to Prevent Malware Infections From E-mail

More and more online fraud is the result of malicious software (“MALWARE”) that can invade your computer when you open an attachment, click on a pop-up ad or download a game, song, screensaver or other application.

Attacks often still begin with an e-mail, but the goal is to get you to unknowingly install the malware on your computer. It can then be used to record your keystrokes, gather credit card numbers, passwords and other personal information and send that data directly back to the thieves.

Steps to protect yourself from Malware:

  1. Use the tips listed above in the “phishing” section to spot suspicious e-mail.
  2. Consider any attachment to e-mail messages as potentially unsafe. They can cause you to download spyware or a virus without your knowledge or any indication that this is occurring. Capital One will never e-mail you an attachment or a software update to install on your computer. In general, never open unexpected attachments from anyone.
  3. Treat all links in e-mails as potentially unsafe. Many fraudulent e-mails have a link that looks valid, but sends you to a fake site that may or may not have a URL different from the link. As always, if it looks suspicious, don’t click it.

Learn More About How To Protect Yourself From E-mail Fraud

You can find further information on Fraud Prevention at the following public service sites:

Disclaimer: Capital One neither operates nor controls these sites and makes no warranties as to the accuracy, efficacy of completeness of the advice provided there. Capital One is not knowledgeable about or responsible for the privacy, data security and/or data usage practices of the site operator.