A warning to all of us—Some FMCA members hit with phishing scam

It looked like some sort of official notification, but an email that went out to some folks was decidedly a scam. The FMCA members hit with the phishing scam received a “Membership Renewal Suspension Notice,” purportedly from FMCA . It used a familiar FMCA logo that the organization uses on official emails.

FMCA members hit with phishing scam—FMCA reacts

We first heard about this when publisher Chuck Woodbury got one such notice in his email. The follow-up was a truly official email, sent by the real FMCA, advising that the earlier messages were fake and should be discarded.

That the phishing emails were, indeed, scams was pretty evident from the wording of the message. For example, one line of the phony emails read, “You have 24 hours to complete these steps to avoid your membership service suspension & delection of your post.” Delection of your post? Huh? Another dead giveaway was the sender’s information at the top of the email. Rather than coming from FMCA, the sender was “Pernille Wendt” who listed not an FMCA email address, but a somewhat generic Gmail address.

Scammers getting trickier. This one was an amateur

Of course, scammers aren’t always so transparent. Sophisticated scammers can fake or “spoof” email headers to make them look legitimate. Look to the content of the message. In some, as in the FMCA “Suspension Notice,” the message was injected with a sense of urgency. “You have 24 hours to complete these steps …” is a tipoff to a phishing scam. And the old “click here” to keep yourself out of hot water. The click didn’t lead to FMCA, but rather to a for-hire forms generating site. Those that followed that link may have been asked for sensitive personal information. In some instances “responding” to an email can lead to having nasty “malware” loaded onto your computer.

We asked FMCA for more details on the phishing scheme. Pamela Kay, FMCA’s Director of Communications, says that the organization heard from some members about the fake email. “Maybe 15 or 20” members contacted the organization about the mailing. Asked if FMCA could have been hacked to get members’ email addresses, Pamela said it was doubtful. She pointed out that some members have posted their affiliation with FMCA on the internet, including their email addresses. All in all, FMCA doesn’t think the phishing attempt was widespread, but wanted to exercise caution and warn all members that it had happened.

“Bone up” on phishing scams

Phishing can happen to any of us. You can “bone up” on how these scams work, and how to watch out for them, by reading an article from the Federal Trade Commission. Click here to read it.

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