Isle of Wight councillors, as well as town and parish councillors, may have been targeted by scammers as fake texting and emails claiming to represent them are being sent out across the Island.
News OnTheWight first noticed a suspicious email from Cllr Cameron Palin, from his East Cowes Town Council (ECTC) email address last summer and got in touch to let him know.
Cllr Palin explained,
“The first time my own email account was used was 19th August 2021 when someone successfully hacked my account and sent out phishing emails to many people including the leader of the council and MP.
“I made our clerks aware and they contacted our Website/email managers.”
It’s happening again
Isle of Wight councillor for East Cowes, Cllr Karl Love, has now informed News OnTheWight that he and several other Isle of Wight councillors, as well as Town and Parish Councils are affected.
He has warned his residents,
“If you receive a text and email from myself or from any councillors, be it town and parish or county council, always check our email address matches.
“Texting is more difficult to identify, but this is how I was alerted to the fake messages. If you have recently received texts in my name, asking you to ’email me for a conversation via email for private reasons and stating I am currently in a meeting’, it is definitely not from me.”
Reported to the Monitoring Officer
Cllr Palin added,
“Cllr Love had a fake email pretending to be him at the start of this month. I first made Cllr Love aware, before then making all councillors in East Cowes, the clerks and IWALC aware of this.
“Following conversations with Cllr Love I made the Monitoring Officer at the Isle of Wight council aware.”
Advice for email users
Andrew Nordbruch from Wight Computers shares this helpful advice.
He says,
“Email scams are becoming more sophisticated as criminals try to find new ways to extort money from people.
“The first thing you should check is the sender address. It’s easy for anyone to make an email look like it’s from your contact by using their name; but quite often, the email address is not one you recognise.
“If the email address is correct, the sender may have fallen for a phishing scam and had their account compromised.
“If you’re ever unsure and want to double check, contact the sender by telephone using a number that you already have (not one included on their email).
“It’s also important that councillors always use their official council email address rather than a personal address like Gmail. As well as making it easier for members of the public to recognise an official email address, these accounts can have extra security enforced such as multi-factor authentication.”
Learn more about how to spot scams on the NCSC Website.
Cllr Love finished by saying,
“Sadly there are many scammers out there all trying to help themselves to your money.”
Article edit
11.55am 24th Jan 2022 – Info from Andrew Nordbruch added
