Phishing is a scam where fraudulent emails are sent to people in an attempt to trick them into revealing personal or financial information.
There appears to have been an increase in such emails targeting non-profit organisations such as patient associations. Today we have been notified of a number of emails being received that claimed to have been sent by a member of the IBE Executive Committee.
These emails are fraudulent and have nothing to do with IBE.
When dealing with uninvited contacts from people or businesses, whether it’s over the phone, by mail, email, in person or on a social networking site, always consider the possibility that the approach may be a scam.
How to identify a phishing email
- Don’t trust the display name: A common phishing tactic is to spoof the display name of an email, i.e. make it appear as if it came from IBE. This fraudulent email, once delivered, can appear legitimate because most user inboxes only present the display name. Don’t trust this. Check the full email address — if it looks suspicious, delete the email.
- Don’t give up personal/financial information: We will never ask for financial information via email. If an email requests this information it is more than likely a phishing scam.
Never send money or give credit card details, online account details or copies of personal documents to anyone you don’t know or trust. If somebody asks you to wire money, be careful. There is no way to reverse a wire transfer – once the money leaves your account, it’s gone, and you can’t ask the bank to “undo” the transfer. - Look but don’t click: Hover your mouse over any links embedded in the body of the email. If the link address looks unusual, don’t click on it.
Protecting your email address
IBE Chapter contacts are listed on the IBE website. Fraudsters could target email addresses listed here.
If you would like any email addresses that are currently listed for your Chapter to be removed from the website please contact us.
(Note that your email address can often be found from publicly available sources, other websites or even randomly generated. Therefore if you receive a phishing email it does not mean that your email address, name or any other information has been gathered from the IBE website).
If you have any concerns or suspicions about an email please contact us and we will advise you on what to do.