TOPIC:

My club president received the following e-mail, supposedly from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. It looks like a phishing attack to me. The ALLOCATE MORE DATA line was a link. Unfortunately, he did click on that, but he stopped when it asked him to log in to something. He then forwarded it to me to ask about it. Has anyone else seen anything like this, and do I need to worry?

From: Toastmasters Club 1177603 on behalf of Mail Team <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Subject: Your mailbox usage is 85% full
To: "This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it." <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>


Hi This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

You are about exceeding your free data volume.

Avoid mail subscrition suspention, and email retrival malfunction, by following below reference

ALLOCATE MORE DATA TO [This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]

We will not be responsible for any subscrition suspention or email retrival malfunction if after this warning no response from you.

Mail Team


Here is the message I sent out to my fellow club members about it. I hope this makes sense.

Hello fellow Toastmasters,

Please be very careful if you get an email like the one below that went to Ben about his Toastmasters email box being almost full. Note that I removed the links before sending this.

Please DO NOT click on the link. You should just delete the message. Before doing that, if you're using gmail, please report it to Google as spam by clicking on the More drop-down arrow on the upper right side of the email's header line (next to the reply icon) and then clicking on Report Spam. Delete it right after that.

It looks totally bogus and probably dangerous. My gmail is showing me a banner that says "Be careful with this message. Similar messages were used to steal people's personal information." I think I heard something about this as a scam recently, too. Furthermore, the grammar and spelling are very bad, which is never a good sign

I don't believe we can have a full mailbox on these accounts. All they are doing is receiving and forwarding messages to the "real" account you have specified. There is no reason to keep them in the toastmasters email account.

Best regards,
Robyn

Robyn Seaton, VPM and webmaster
Agua Fria Toastmasters Club #1776603
Goodyear, Arizona, USA
aguafria.toastmastersclubs.org

The email is just more spam.

We do not filter the email to the officers as diligently as we do for the group email lists. You have the option of black listing that email address in the admin console.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your quick response.

The scary things is that it says it came from the "Mail Team" at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I don't want to blacklist our server address, so I guess we'll just have to be vigilant.

Am I correct that you aren't storing any emails anywhere, but just forwarding them, so that having a full mailbox for a toastmastersclubs account is impossible?

Regards
Robyn

Ok, I think I need to jump in here and clear something up...

All of the emails will appear to come from the FreeToastHost server by design. That is so that there is a consistent from address that corporate clubs can whitelist in their spam filters.

Here is how to determine what address you should black list: Click reply on the email, but do *not* click send. The email address that shows up in the To: box is the email address that should be blacklisted. (It will be different than the From address. Cancel the reply once you get the correct email address to blacklist.)