Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System recently issued the following announcement.
Be on the alert! We are seeing an increase among online and e-mail opportunists trying to take advantage of people’s anxieties.
Some state employees have received unsolicited e-mails from outside entities, urging them to click on a survey link, book a free consultation, or some other action that requires risking personal information.
Don’t do it!
These e-mails are NOT from SERS or Empower Retirement, the third-party administrator of the deferred comp and defined contribution plans.
Please be especially wary of financial planners who present themselves as experts about your SERS retirement benefits. In many cases, their goal is to sell you an investment product.
If you are considering an investment product, be sure to compare the fees for that product to those offered through the SERS Deferred Compensation Plan. In most cases, the deferred comp fees will be lower because they have been professionally negotiated for a large employer-based investment pool.
Stay safe!
To keep your retirement savings safe, don’t click on strange or suspicious links from sources you don’t know. You can trust communications clearly coming from SERS (@PennSERS), or Empower Retirement (@EmpowerToday), or an e-mail address that ends in “pa.gov”.
Remember. If something doesn’t look right – don’t click on it.
We also encourage you to forward the e-mail as an attachment to CWOPA_SPAM@pa.gov so our security specialists can continue to monitor the situation. Then delete it.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, and please continue to stay safe out there.
Original source: http://sers.pa.gov/
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