Every few weeks, someone in our congregation or on our staff receives an email that is supposedly from Rev. Bill or another member of our community, asking for “discreet” help (if you respond, they ask you to purchase gift cards for them), asking for access to our directory, or asking for some other supposed favor. These may be “phishing” attacks.
Phishing is not a relaxing, recreational activity but a real hazard posed by today’s digital world. Phishing is defined as the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from a reliable source for the purpose of obtaining personal information, such as passwords or credit card numbers. On the surface, a request from our minister or HUUC community might seem to be legitimate but unfortunately, due to these scams, such requests might not be real and are harmful scams.
Email phishing scams have used our beloved institution and leadership as fake fronts for their nefarious purposes on several occasions, even in recent weeks. A common focus of the attack is to obtain unauthorized access to our directory and other website functions. For the security of us all, do not share this information! Here are a few suggestions to avoid peril from such attacks.
- Review the return email address on emails asking for personal information or a “favor,” such as sharing a password. Assure that the address is one you use to correspond with the sender.
- If the email originates from a gmail.com source, use this link to report the abuse – https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse . You can also block any future emails from this email source.
- Do not share any password information, for yourself or any HUUC function!
- Look for any unusual miss-spellings or missing typical sign-offs in emails from sources asking for information or favors.
- Do not click on or open any links or attachments in questionable emails.
- Send questionable emails immediately to spam and delete them.
- Call the supposed sender to determine if their request is real.
Help us keep our communications safe by helping us fight phishing.
Thank you for your assistance.
Image source: https://tinyurl.com/tcjkbe4t