[Ohio-Talk] Spam emails.

[Todd Elzey]

I would also like to echo President Payne's warnings. I receive multiple
emails purporting to be from him every single day asking me to buy gift
cards, pay administrative expenses, etc. In the beginning these messages
were almost laughable because of the obvious mistakes in them. But
recently, I have noticed some improvement in the spammers' messages where
they are getting closer to sounding like they are regarding a legitimate
business purpose. But they are still inconsistent with our business
practices and President Payne's way of doing business. All of this is to
say if it sounds wrong or if it feels wrong, trust your instincts. Double
check the sender's email address in the heading and verify the request by
reaching out to the purported sender via a contact email or phone number
that you know to be valid (i.e. do not simply hit reply). Whiles these
precautions may be annoying, they are absolutely essential to protecting
yourself. Once money is given to a spammer, it is often almost impossible
to recover it because many of these criminals operate outside of the U.S.
Often they even operate in countries where the U.S. doesn't have
extradition treaties so there is almost nothing U.S. law enforcement can do
about the scam. On the good side, once our website moves over to the new
Drupal 9 platform early next year, these scam messages should eventually
slow down as the new site backend has better security measures in place to
stop scammers from obtaining emails from our site.

Finally, keep in mind that the need to protect yourself doesn't just apply
to NFB related emails. It also applies to emails you receive purportedly
sent by other businesses, government agencies, or even law enforcement.
There have been a rash of scams lately where scammers are sending emails or
even calling claiming to be from government agencies or law enforcement
attempting to get victims to pay fines or penalties to avoid being
arrested. Law enforcement and government agencies never operate that way.
Again, if it feels wrong it probably is wrong. If you have any doubt at all
about the legitimacy of a contact you should not respond and verify it
through a verifiable contact method.

I hope this helps.

Todd Elzey, Treasurer
National Federation of the Blind

On Tue, Nov 1, 2022 at 11:57 AM Richard Payne via Ohio-Talk <
ohio-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

>         Greetings Ohio,
>
> I am sending a reminder that if you get an email or text from me or any of
> our leaders that appears to be different check the email address and phone
> number that it is coming from. I received a few calls this morning that ask
> people to call me or buy gift cards and that would not be me.
>
>
> Richard Payne,  President
> National Federation of the Blind of Ohio
> 937/829/3368
> Rchpay7 at gmail.com <mailto:Rchpay7 at gmail.com>
> The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the
> characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the
> expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles
> between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want;
> blindness is not what holds you back.
>
>
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