What should I do about my nonprofit's name being used in a scam email?
November 9, 2010 11:34 AM Subscribe
A nonprofit organization I'm working with has received a forwarded e-mail supposedly from them. It's not, and their good name is being used in a scam. What should they do?
They got an e-mail today from someone who was concerned that their organization was being used in a scam. The e-mail stole a bit of copy from their website and promised money to the recipient if they contacted the sender at a gmail account or his associate at a yahoo.fr account or a French telephone number. The nonprofit is located in the US. Nothing pops up on google for either email account or the phone number.
The whole thing seems obviously scammy, but people do get suckered in by these things, right? And that would be terrible-- this organization does a lot of good work.
My question is: what should this nonprofit be doing about this? Is there anything they can do?
They got an e-mail today from someone who was concerned that their organization was being used in a scam. The e-mail stole a bit of copy from their website and promised money to the recipient if they contacted the sender at a gmail account or his associate at a yahoo.fr account or a French telephone number. The nonprofit is located in the US. Nothing pops up on google for either email account or the phone number.
The whole thing seems obviously scammy, but people do get suckered in by these things, right? And that would be terrible-- this organization does a lot of good work.
My question is: what should this nonprofit be doing about this? Is there anything they can do?
I would discuss this with the organization's attorney and consider putting some sort of brief paragraph disclaimer on the website.
posted by AugustWest at 11:50 AM on November 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by AugustWest at 11:50 AM on November 9, 2010 [1 favorite]
Just put a note on your website the same the Red Cross does.
posted by exhilaration at 12:42 PM on November 9, 2010
posted by exhilaration at 12:42 PM on November 9, 2010
As the email sites referred to are real co's (yahoo and google) you should contact them and get them shutdown (the accounts, not google. DO NOT GET GOOGLE SHUT DOWN!). It won't stop them for long, but hey.
This in addition to what the rest of the suggestions.
posted by d4nj450n at 1:24 PM on November 9, 2010
This in addition to what the rest of the suggestions.
posted by d4nj450n at 1:24 PM on November 9, 2010
Was the original scammy email using a company account or domain? Or did they just lift some text from your site and send it from a non-related email account?
posted by fontophilic at 1:39 PM on November 9, 2010
posted by fontophilic at 1:39 PM on November 9, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks very much for all of the comments and advice, everyone. They were indeed using a plain old gmail account, and hadn't even spoofed our domain, so it seems like there's not all that much we can do.
We're considering whether to put up a note on the website, but undecided at this point whether it's actually more attention that we should be paying it.
And we'll try not to get Google shut down. That would be terrible.
Thanks again!
posted by hwickline at 4:08 PM on November 9, 2010
We're considering whether to put up a note on the website, but undecided at this point whether it's actually more attention that we should be paying it.
And we'll try not to get Google shut down. That would be terrible.
Thanks again!
posted by hwickline at 4:08 PM on November 9, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
People do get suckered. But that's roughly the price of Anonymity On The Internet.
posted by pwnguin at 11:38 AM on November 9, 2010