A Note to the Pacific Mountain Regional Council Newsletter List
Dear All,
We're getting notes at the PMRC office, letting us know that there are still many scam and spam messages landing in people's inboxes, as if they are from me (and other staff) personally.
Remember:
I, and Regional Council staff, will not ask you for support, emotionally or financially
trust your instinct and your logic
you are always welcome and encouraged to send a new email message or give us a call to find out if an email from me and/ or staff is legitimate.
When emailing us to check things out, remember:
don't reply to the suspect email - replying to a suspect email will get you in the scam/spam loop if it is a fraudulent message.
don't cut and paste our email address - instead start a new message, and type in our email address or add it from your address book
We hold our work for the regional council with honour, do so professionally. When you alert us to fraudulent emails, we report them which helps to improve the united-church.ca system secure and communicate concerns to community and members. More information on how to address fraudulent emails is on the Canada's Anti-spam Legislation website (click). Often scammers use a Gmail address; you can report spam Gmail messages at this link: https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse?hl=en
Thank you for your diligence and care,
Treena Duncan
Executive Minister
Additional Context
The emails look as though they are from United Church congregational ministers or Regional Council staff, yet they are fake messages carrying a simple, yet sophisticated scam. The messages impersonate the minister, sometimes doing enough research to mimic their personality or writing style.
Often email scams preye on our desire to be in ministry together, helping out where we can. One victim reported that ‘they felt honoured to be asked to help.’
Please know that Pacific Mountain leaders (ministers, regional staff etc) will not email you to ask for help (financial, emotional, etc), and will not ask you to keep correspondence a secret or ask you not to contact them by phone.
If you get an email that looks like it has come from someone you know and trust, but suspect it is spam, please follow these steps:
don't click on any links in the email
don't open any attachments attached to the email
don't use the Reply feature to respond to the email
If you feel and think that the email may be a legitimate message you can:
hover your cursor over the From name to reveal the email address that the sender has used. If the details are different from the minister or church staff person's usual email address, it is not legitimate and follow the three steps above
call the minister or staff person who is supposedly sending the email, or
compose a NEW email (not Reply to) to the staff person or leader, using their trusted email address, to gain clarity and information about the email you received.
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre hosted a live session for March 2021, that you can watch on Facebook: https://fb.watch/4frG-Y7Kt8/
