Hi Selene Friends:
I've heard from several of you that you have received another round of the same scam email that has been arriving in some of our member's inboxes now for some time. The emails are all identical--offering to sell the Selene Owner's Association contact list (saying they have 1000+ contacts......which can't be true, since there are only about 225 members!).
I've reported these scam emails to Club Express. They have repeatedly said that they have no evidence that the Club Express database was compromised, and have suggested that it's more likely that one of our member's passwords has been compromised. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon, especially when people use the same password for many sites.
There are several indications that this is just a scam:
1. The emails are all addressed to the member's user names, not their real names (unless, of course, your real name IS your user name).
2. They are advertising that they have 1000+ contacts in the member database. We only have about 225 members.
3. The emails all come from a generic "
gmail.com" address, which as you know are super easy and fast to setup and equally fast to abandon.
4. So far, all of these emails (that I know of) have gone to members of the association, which means this person is not the sharpest tool in the shed, given that the very people he's trying to sell the list to ALREADY HAVE access to the list!
I did send a threatening email to the gmail account from
admin@seleneowners.org. I did not expect to receive any response.
So.....I know it's irritating, but at this point, I see no reason to take this threat particularly seriously. I've taken all the steps I can think of to address this. For the moment, I'd suggest just deleting and ignoring the mail.
I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Mark Tilden
Selene Owner's Association President & Webmaster