E-mail addresses

Mr Moderator,

I posted this earlier on a group chat page. Copied for your action.

"I was not on the website much last week, so I will have missed this, if it cropped up as an issue. Has the RSPB been targeted by spammers/scammers? Without publicising the name or email address of the spammer, I have received an email from someone I have never heard of. This person says they have read my profile and wants to be my friend and there are two live links in the email one to RSPB? and the other appears to be an email address.

Has anyone else had this experience? If so an estimate of how many of us are affected can be fed back to RSPB, tomorrow. The question is however, how did the sender get the email address and know that I was on the community website. There is no evidence of anyone of this name, legitimately trying to be my friend, on the contrary I have seen the person listed as a scammer on Google, albeit with only three hits, two of which are German.

I have not identified the person, for reasons of security, to avoid anyone on here getting drawn in, by clicking on a spoof website, for instance. That is why I have been a bit vague. The email arrived on 28th July, when I was busy on other things, I have just found it in my Junk folder in MS Outlook."

I subsequently was directed to this thread by a friend. If you wish the email I can forward it to you. The content is not sexual, but indicates the possibility of some intimacy.

EDIT: 1.42am.....there is another member, who has received an email from the same sender.....I bet this is just the start of this issue.

Sounds like dum cyber technos who think they can access acount detaisl for the RSPB website to me. I get all sorts of emails from banks stating that my account has been compromised and I need to send my secure password to them to reopen the account. It strange how many bank accounts I apparently have and with banks I've never heard of. I'm also getting emails from twatter and farcebook stating similar things, so don't bother to open the emails and if you do don't reply.

Richard

Hello jsb,

I had one dodgy email, that is why I have changed my username from my original one. I did inform the mods.  I have still kept my avator.

Wren

doggie: The email is in my spam/junk folder, Outlook has disabled it, so I cannot see the properties and I am not going to move it into another folder to get more info. Suffice to say it is addressed to a mailing list, 'Undisclosed recipients', using the bcc send option. Re the 'how' question, the email mentions RSPB and my email was obtained and added to said mailing list. Waiting to hear from the moderator, so that I can send it to him, then we may know more. As I said in 'EDIT' another longstanding blogger has received the same sort of email from the same sender. I am now of the opinion that it is a Nigerian type of scam, but coming from Senegal probably.

Hi all,

Thanks again for keeping us in the loop with this. Your privacy is the issue we take as the most important and as a result we maintain a very vigilant eye on industry updates around new vulnerabilities and best practice.

I'm probably repeating myself, but I want to reassure you all, so thought a re-cap on the issue might help. We have had 3 reports about odd, spam-like emails (all 3 being reports of receiving a similar spam type email on 28th/29th). We've had no reports since then. We immediately ran detailed security tests and spoke to specialists for further advice. We then added further security measures immediately and have had no more reports of emails after the 28th/29th reports.

I know it's daft to say there's no way to breach our system, but we continue to keep a vigilant eye on all measures we can take to stop spammers and other wrong-doers.

I hope this means you can rest easier. We'll genuinely do everything we can to look after your privacy.

Thanks again for all your reports - you're our eyes and ears and it gives us even more confidence in our community working together to look after one another.

Kindest regards,

Cliff

PS – look out for a poll later today – we're looking for your views to help us decide about next steps on the other issue reported in this thread – making profile pages visible only to registered community members. Thanks again.

I checked out my e-mails last night too and found an invitation from the lovely lady caught in my spam filter. It was sent on 28th July. It did say that they had been browsing my RSPB profile.

I suggest everyone check their spam filters.

 

Unknown said:

Hi jsb

Have they sent it through the normal rspb friendship email address as if they a member of the forum

I suspect you have the answer as our emails crossed...see above Tiger is correct, everyone should check their spam/junk/phishing filters and if junk goes into a folder, it should be visible, or click on the in box headings tick box to expand the full list of folders. If it becomes repetitive, at least in Outlook, there is a rule setting in the advanced options, to delete mails from a sender, immediately, so you will never see them again.

Also I have not seen other UK or any French websites affected so far, but Germany seems to be one that the lady?/man impersonator uses.

jsb, as you say it looks like a variant on the 'I am the wife of so and so, whose money is...' I originally brought the subject up because the email referenced the rspb and claimed to have got my e-mail address off the forums and to give a heads up that we were about to have another idiot annoy us. Hopefully everyones spam filters have picked it up

Caroline in Jersey

I don't think these are the normal run of the mill spams. For one thing, the Nigerian type spams are sent to random people all over the country, but these were sent to people on the forum. The question is, how did they know the recipients were members of the forum?