The recent crisis affecting many financial institutions has the Federal Trade Commission warning investors to be on the look out for emails and phone calls trying to take advantage of the banking failures, mergers and takeovers that have been occurring recently.

Scammers have been calling victims or sending emails that appear as if they are from the financial institution that has acquired the victim's bank, savings and loan, or mortgage.

These phishing scams intent is to collect or capture your personal financial information.

The messages will vary in content but will generally ask you to “update,” “validate,” or “confirm” your account information.

There are a number of measures investors can take to help protect themselves from these and other types of scams.

First, refuse any unsolicited contact from anyone seeking personal financial information or money.

Also, don’t email any of your personal or financial information. Email is not a secure way to send sensitive information.

Another protective measure is simply reviewing your financial account statements for unauthorized charges as soon as you receive them.

If you believe you've been sent a phishing email you can forward the email to spam@uce.gov.

Also a copy of the email should be forwarded to the institution or company impersonated in the phishing email.

You can also report phishing emails to reportphishing@antiphishing.org which is an Anti-Phishing Working Group which uses these reports to fight phishing.

Finally, if you believe you’ve been scammed, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft web site at www.ftc.gov/idtheft for information on steps to take.

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