Whenever you decide to create a public facing website, such as many of your Making Music Platform’s provide, it is often useful to publish information about your group – such as the name and email of the Music Director, or of the membership secretary.
This information, whilst important to have visible on your site, does mean that anybody will be able to reach out, and very occasionally they may do this with bad intentions. Often, a scam email is created in the following way:
- Scamming technology scours the internet for public names/email addresses (looking especially for words like ‘director’ or ‘treasurer’)
- The scamming technology then creates an email address with that found name, and messages another email address on that site with a request for money/information
With a little vigilance, however, these emails are easily spotted and prevented. Here are our top tips for spotting one of these emails. Firstly, check the actual email address of the sender: Many email clients allow email addresses to show a ‘Display Name’, a bit like a nickname. Whilst this Display Name may be the name of your Chair or Treasurer, by clicking or hovering on the name you will see the actual email address behind it. This is likely to be something randomly generated, with random letters or numbers. Even if it is a more convincing looking address, it is always useful to cross-check that email address with the actual email address of the sender.
- A scam email will often want you to act quickly (so that you overlook some of the signs that it is a scam email). This may come in the form of asking for a quick response or suggesting that it is an emergency.
- A scam email will often be trying to obtain money, bank details, or personal information. Most often, there is a request for a bank/BACS transfer that needs to be done quickly.
- Scam emails often use generic phrasing or formatting – they can be impersonal and to the point. Compare this with what you know of the supposed senders usual writing style. Giveaways can also be things such as the signature or send-off.
With these in mind, here are some good suggestions for what to do if you receive and identify a scam email:
- Review the information that you have publicly available. Do you need the email addresses and names of all your committee on your public website? It may be better to have just the membership secretary and a general contact email, for example.
- Share advice with other members of your group that you have received the scam email, so that they can be looking out for similar things.
- If in any doubt about the origin of the email, contact the supposed sender via an alternative email or even via a phone number to confirm whether they sent it. It is good practice to do this kind of double confirmation when discussing financial or sensitive information.
- Let us know of the scam email (or other scams related to the Platform) on platform@makingmusic.org.uk. We will then be able to make groups aware of these attempts and what to look out for.
- Stay vigilant – scammers may change their tactic or try something new, so always be careful if something doesn’t look right.
