This is a message sent via Northamptonshire Community Connect. This information has been sent on behalf of System Administrators
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Message sent by
Mike Douglas (VISAV, Product Director, Global)
Dear Steven Paul,
This is a System Administrator message to hopefully put your mind at rest if you have received a recent spam / phishing email that purported to be from the Neighbourhood Alert system this week. (If you have not received the email in question then this email can safely be disregarded and deleted.). Neighbourhood Alert is the system that powers http://www.northamptonshirecommunityconnect.co.uk.
Incident details:
Around the 7th February a NON Alert email was sent from email domain @lepmieseorthy.blowquest.com to an unknown number of recipients. The email looked like the inserted image and contained links to a phishing website.
This email was NOT sent on Alert but the sender included in the email name “on behalf of Neighborhood Alert” (Note: they did not spell Neighbourhood in correct English).
The email was not otherwise disguised as an Alert email and in no way touched our systems.
You probably did not receive this email as many email anti-virus systems blocked it anyway.
How did they get your email?
If you did receive this spam email then please be assured it was most probably sent to millions of email addresses, most of which can be “trawled” from social media sites and website listings. Your email address certainly did NOT come from the Alert system.
If you are not convinced of this, please be aware that registration on most social media sites does mean that your data can be used, sold and shared. If your data has ever existed on any website, this information is often “cached” and available in searched for years.
Various services available online demonstrate that your imprint on the internet and across social media is available at a price, for example: http://www.spokeo.com/email-search (Please view this site but we are not recommending that you pay for any results).
We are not trying to alarm you, it is simply important that you are aware of the risks when sharing your information and when you receive email from unknown sources or, as in this case, when they claim to be from a source you do trust. Please be assured that your Neighbourhood Alert presence is fully encrypted and we can never sell or publicise your data including usage patterns, responses or email addresses.
Various follow up messages have been sent on Alert to warn people in some areas about the original scam but these have inadvertently caused some confusion.
Just to clarify:
NO fraudulent, scam, phishing or any other sort of illegal email has EVER been sent out on the Neighbourhood Alert system.
No one has ever managed to hack into Alert or exploit any of the user data.
We do not and cannot sell or share your data and unlike systems like Facebook, Twitter, nextdoor, streetlife of any other commercial operations we are regulated by explicit police data sharing and processing contracts.
I am sorry for any concern or frustration caused by the follow up messages, please be assured that we take security, reputation, and safety very seriously. We have a fully contracted Senior CESG accredited consultant who overseas our procedures, systems and hardware, we are accredited to the Home Office recommended Cyber Essentials Plus standard and operate to all relevant good practice guides.
To summarise: no one has accessed Alert or any of the user data, the original email in question has been reported to Action Fraud and is nothing to do with Neighbourhood Alert.
If you received a warning on Alert about the scam email then this is perfectly safe, contains no dangerous links and you have nothing to worry about.
It would be helpful, if you did receive the original email (which looks like the image above), if you could report it (or any other spam or phising emails) to Action Fraud on https://reportlite.actionfraud.police.uk/ or by calling 0300 123 2040
Further advice
You will find links to advice about how to identify when an email is authentic and what to look out for on this page in our Help Centre:
Finally, Thank you for your ongoing participation, please remember that rating and forwarding these messages (using the buttons below) is vital for the continued success and improvement of the system.
Very best regards
Mike Douglas
Director: Neighbourhood Alert