[Oe List ...] Scam Risk

[Harry Wainwright]

Colleagues,

There is a series of scams going around that have arrived in both my
personal e-mail and on these two lists.  They are disguised as messages from
financial institutions including banks.  The messages include the normal
logos from these institutions.  The messages either tell you that they are
updating or confirming your financial information and ask for social
security numbers or national identity information, account numbers,
addresses, names, etc.  They do this by either asking you to send a message
to an e-mail address or to access a web site.  Please do not do either of
these things.

When the scam request is from a financial institution is one that I use, I
notify it directly, normally by telephone, and tell them about the scam.  So
far they have always appreciated the heads up.

When one of these messages is directed to either of our lists, the list
software automatically blocks the message and notifies the list owner.  As
one of the list owners I discard the message, put a block on the sender’s
address and ban the sender’s address from subscribing to the list.

These scams are harvesting your e-mail address from some source other that
either of our lists.  The list software protects your e-mail address from
that happening.  However, if you forward a message from the list, please be
sure to remove the header and footer so that the identities of our lists are
protected.  We get many messages on the lists and to me personally that are
forwards and disclose both headers and footers.

Folks, we all are encouraged to practice safe computing.  Thanks for reading
this.

Peace,
Harry