May Fraud Alert for Account Aggregation Services

An emerging trend in Internet based financial services is the use of Account Aggregation Services. These web-based services provide customers with a single page view into all of their financial account information from various institutions. In order to obtain the information needed to gather this data, the Account Aggregators will require customers to provide their login credentials (username and password) to their online banking accounts. In some cases, the Account Aggregator will even require the user to store their secret answers to challenge-response questions used by banks.

The Account Aggregators will use customer login credentials to access the customer's bank account electronically and "scrape" information from the Bank’s website without the Bank's knowledge. After the Account Aggregators have "scraped" the data from the Bank's website, the storage and access to that data is controlled by the Account Aggregator. Although the Bank is committed to protecting customer information, Account Aggregators may not provide the same level of protection and in many cases provide much less protection than the Bank’s online website. Finally, Account Aggregators may not have to comply with customer protection regulations or may be smaller startup companies that do not have sophisticated security and fraud teams.

It is important for customers to understand that the sharing of account login credentials with anyone, including Account Aggregators, could put their finances or personal information at risk and should be avoided.

If you need assistance or discover any suspicious online sites, emails, or other fraudulent activity involving your account, please call a Fifth Third Customer Service Professional at 1-800-676-5869. They are available to serve you Monday through Friday 8 AM–9 PM ET and Saturday through Sunday 8AM–5 PM ET. You may also contact us securely via our website 24 hours a day, seven days a week.