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Military Reunion Network | FALL 2018 | #militaryreunionsmatter Military Reunion Network | FALL 2018 | #militaryreunionsmatter
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In a February 23, 2018, Ari Lazarus, Consumer The question is, what does all of this have to
Education Specialist, FTC posted an article on the do with military reunions? Over the course of the
Federal Trade Commission website. He made the past several years, we have been to hundreds of
following suggestions to keep information secure. military reunion websites. While they vary in design
and content, the clear majority include organization
• Be suspicious if a business, government agency, contact information, announcements like upcoming
or organization asks you to click on a link that reunions, memoriam, as well as membership rosters.
then asks for your username or password or I have seen the name, years of service, mailing
other personal data. Instead, type in the web address, phone number and email address of
address for the organization or call them. The link hundreds of association members. Roster contact
in the email may look right, but if you click it you information needs to be removed from websites
may go to a copycat website run by a scammer.
IMMEDIATELY. Names may remain, but from
a security perspective everything else should
• Be cautious about opening attachments. A
scammer could even pretend to be a friend or be removed. You are putting your association
family member, sending messages with malware membership at risk not only for email spam but
from a spoofed account. email (and telephone) scams. It takes a matter
of seconds for phishers to capture the details. In
• Set your security software to update addition, the increase attention and regulation of
automatically, and back up your files to an data privacy may result reunion associations being
external hard drive or cloud storage. Back up liable for making member contact information
your files regularly and use security software you public. The same goes for association board and
trust to protect your data. volunteer positions. Dave Morgan, Treasurer,
425-555-1212 dmorgan@gmail.com should be
Receiving spam and phishing emails is changed to Dave Morgan, Treasurer. Remove his
unfortunately a part of email technology that will
personal phone and email information from the
never disappear. The more protective consumers website. Change his email to something generic
are, the savvier phishers become. The question is,
like reuniontreasurer@gmail.com This email is then
how do they get your email in the first place? There set up to be forwarded to dmorgan@gmail.com
are four basic ways.
Responses to legitimate inquires can be made from
his dmorgan@gmail.com address. Spam email is
1) Hacking
deleted without phishers accessing his personal
2) Illegally purchasing a list of email addresses information. Connections to members can be
handled in much the same way. Identify a volunteer
3) You volunteer it to handle membership/member inquires. A generic
membershipussmilitaryreunion@gmail.com is one
4) Harvesting option.
Spammers will use programs that search There is a responsibility to keep the contact
websites looking for anything with an @ symbol. information of the reunion association members
If you can see an email on a website so can the private and safe. A great winter project would be to
spammers. review and update your association website.
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