Dear Members and Friends of UUSS,
This afternoon (June 6) some of you received an email with the subject line of
REQUEST. It came by the name of our member
Sally White, but it is not from her. You can see that the sender's Gmail address is not Sally's if you look closely.
It says:
Are you available at the moment?
Best Regards
Sally White
Don't reply to it. Don't give any personal information or money. If you reply to it you likely will get a request for some kind of financial assistance or perhaps invited to participate in a monetary windfall or any number of ways that scammers try to get money electronically. Often they ask you to buy electronic gift cards and give them the ID and password for the money. Sometimes they ask you for personal information. Never give out personal information if you did not initiate the conversation. There is a big spike in cyber crimes in recent months, worldwide.
To report a phishing email to Google (the owner of Gmail), find the directions at this link.
How do they get your email?
From the scams that impersonated Rev. Roger and Rev. Lucy earlier, we have concluded that the criminals
have mined the public pages of our website and lifted some of your email addresses and names--from past issues of the Unigram, Blue Sheet, and Updates. This is why we now have a practice of not listing personal emails for church activities, only a UUSS activity group's email name, by which an email is routed to a person whose email is not public. The ringleaders of the recent scams have read who the leaders of UUSS are, and they impersonate us to trick you into responding. They will not have access to your personal information (or my, Lucy's or Sally's computer information) if you don't reply and don't click on any web link they might send.
If you are unsure of a fishy email, what to do?
If you ever get an email you are not sure about, you can call the supposed sender or forward the suspect email to them at the address you KNOW is right, or just send them a separate, new email. But don't reply to the fishy phising email.
Amid all the sources of heartbreak in our lives, the larger community and this nation, we are more vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Please be cautious and please feel free to reach out if you need to ask something or you just need support. We are thinking of you.
Rev. Roger
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