A friendly reminder to be cautious when opening and responding to suspicious emails. It’s never advisable to provide personal information by email; you should never provide credit card information, social security numbers, or other sensitive information over email (scam or not). If someone is asking for your personal information by email, be sure to confirm you trust the sender before responding.
Over the past few years IINE has observed an increase in scams that use Jeff’s name and spoof his email to mislead employees. These scams often ask the individual to call Jeff at a number listed in the email, provide a cell phone number that Jeff can call or text, click a link, buy gift cards on Jeff’s behalf, or a combination of those requests. Jeff will never reach out by email or text to ask individual staff members to buy gift cards on his behalf; please delete any of those emails (or texts) upon receipt.
IINE is constantly working with our tech consultants, Tech Networks of Boston, to update our security features and screen out as many of these scams as we can. However, there are always going to be some that get through, and, as our organization shares more information on its website and on other internet resources, it’s increasingly likely that individuals will use that data to further target and tailor their email scams. To help educate staff, we’ve previously shared the attached resource. If ever you have questions about a suspicious email, or about what you should and shouldn’t share over the internet, please contact your Office Manager or me.
Please note that IINE expects employees to exercise caution and common sense when using email on the organization’s behalf and/or on its computers. IINE is not responsible for any personal information you might disclose by email, and that, moving forward, we cannot reimburse anyone who might purchase gift cards or other products as part of these scams.
Please make sure you familiarize yourself with some of the more common scam tactics referenced in the attached document. In the best instances, these email scams waste your time. In the worst cases, they can result in you and/or the organization losing money or confidential information.
