Lately we’ve been made aware of at least one company claiming to sell data lists from our events. As annoying as it can be to have to take time away from our core work and our priorities to challenge this, it is crucial that we do so.
We want to share with you some of the actions we’re taking.
We think the recent email we've come across, offering to sell our data, is a phishing attempt and we thought we’d share the clues we spotted, in case this helps you and your team in identifying attempted cyber attacks in your inboxes.
First, while we’re delighted that we have over 500 people registered for our coming Annual Conference, according to the suspicious email, ‘buyers’ could obtain details of all 3,400 delegates! The claim - and the numbers - simply don't stack up.
Second, the address the email came from is not a registered domain. Checking on domains is a useful way to assess whether emails are from a genuine sender. It’s not foolproof, as more sophisticated cybercriminals can spoof genuine domain names and emails, but in this case it confirmed our suspicions.
We’ve used this as an opportunity to check our data security and there are no indications of a breach. But we take our responsibility to you, and the security of your data, seriously.
As a reminder:
- We will never sell the data we hold.
- We will never share your data with anyone, without your explicit consent to do so.
- We regularly review our Privacy Policy and if you have any questions or suggestions, please email the team.
- We take regular refresher training in cybersecurity, data management and GDPR – the whole team at CFG had refresher training in April 2023. We spot a lot of phishing emails – including this latest one – and that gives us confidence in our training and culture on cybersecurity!
- We use a range of tools and technologies to keep our data safe.
If you have any questions about how we manage data security or process your data, please email the team.
If you'd like to find more on the topic of data security, cybercrime and fraud, head to our Knowledge Hub where you can search by topic and find all the latest insights and information on a range of charity finance issues*.
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