Many Utah County residents have recently been the recipient of suspicious e-mails that are supposedly from a local credit union.

Utah Community Credit Union members have received numerous e-mails asking for personal information that could lose them a lot of money, said Dallas Proctor, assistant vice president of electronic services for UCCU.

"Basically, it's just a phishing attack targeted at the UCCU members that we've been addressing for the last week and a half," he said.

The people behind the e-mails obtained the costumers' addresses from the black market and have sent messages telling members their accounts have been suspended or that some validation is required. Once users click on a link provided, they are asked to log in and provide Social Security and credit-card numbers.

"They'll ask them for just about anything they can get, financially," Proctor said.

Once information is provided, the Web site either ends or goes to the UCCU home page, which is a good indicator the message is not from the credit union. Proctor said the clients are supposed to be logging in to their account, so they would not normally be sent to the home page.

At least 100 UCCU customers have contacted the credit union about the scam, and the credit union is working with local FBI officers to shut down the scam. The suspects have taken control of a server somewhere and are able to send the credit union's customers to their own Web site, even though the link is for www.uccu.com.

Proctor said he believes the number of new people affected is slowing down, and steps have been taken to stop the phishing.

"As of right now, all the sites have been shut down that are associated with the last phishing attack," he said.

Proctor said no customers have lost money that he is aware of, and the credit union's customers have usually been aware the e-mails are part of a scam. The credit union has had education on its Web site and at branches about phishing scams and has implemented different security measures when logging in.

If a client is on the UCCU Web site using Internet Explorer, the real site will show a green navigation bar, while a fraudulent site would show up as red.

Laska Anderson, a Provo UCCU customer, said she received three of the e-mails and was concerned about their authenticity.

"It made me nervous, because anytime the credit union had any questions, they sent me a letter in the mail," she said.

Anderson said she asked her parents about the messages, and they told her not to trust the e-mails. Instead, she printed out a copy and took it to her branch.

Anderson said she was not fooled by the scam, but others may not be so lucky.

"They looked so legitimate, that anybody could have fallen for it," she said.