No, MPA’s Board president does NOT need you to buy gift cards

Peggy Scott, this year’s Missouri Press president, recently contacted the Association to pass along a warning. Earlier this week, she received notice from multiple individuals they had been contacted by an email address that had hijacked her name.

Because the sender of the email explicitly used “Peggy Scott” in the Name field for the email and her name in the body of the email, Scott wants to be sure no MPA members fall victim to scammers’ efforts.

The bogus email address also contains a reference to “president” and uses a “@gmail.com” domain, instead of Scott’s real email address, which references Leader Publications’ web presence, @myleaderpaper.com.

Scott reminds Missouri Press members to be wary of unsolicited emails and cautions newspaper employees of all ranks to exercise care when responding to unsolicited and/or suspicious correspondence.

A few quick reminders for determining an email’s legitimacy:

• Grammar can be one giveaway, as scam emails are often written poorly because the author is not a native English speaker, or they contain overly formal English, which is often generated through translation software.
• Attempts to limit communication to one method, such as email, should also raise suspicion.
• An email address that clearly has nothing to do with the sender should elicit caution, particularly if prior communication used a different email address.
• Requests for payment of anything (dues, fines, registrations, etc.) via gift card should be an immediate red flag.

Ultimately, it is better to be overly cautious when it comes to email correspondence and if you think something is suspect, try reaching out to the alleged sender via other means of communication.

Finally, never open an attachment from someone you don’t know, and even then, make sure your computer (and the computers of anyone on staff) have anti-virus software installed.