A Message from FGC about Email Scams
During the COVID-19 pandemic, fraud in the form of phishing has increased substantially. Attackers are impersonating representatives of many different nonprofit organizations and churches, and unfortunately, that has included FGC. Here’s how you can protect yourself and your meeting online.
FGC is so thankful for the generous support of Friends like you, and we also care about the safety of our donors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, fraud in the form of phishing has increased substantially. Attackers are impersonating representatives of many different nonprofit organizations and churches. Unfortunately, FGC is now aware of two instances in the last two weeks of phishing attacks where the fraudsters attempted to pose as FGC staff.
The good news is that our mailing list has not been compromised, and the information you have shared with us is secure. Scammers tend to send phishing messages to email addresses that are publicly available online. Since scammers target email addresses they can find online, we encourage Friends not to share their member directories or personal email addresses for individual Friends on a public-facing website (like on your meeting’s Quaker Finder listing or social media pages).
We encourage Friends to be vigilant when it comes to email-based scams posing as FGC or another Quaker organization, so we’d like to take this opportunity to share a few ways to identify FGC fundraising appeals sent over email:
- The message will have the FGC logo at the top AND will be sent via our FGCquaker.org email domain. In other words, if “FGCquaker” doesn’t appear after the @ symbol of the email, it’s not from our organization. Our staff will never use a personal or non-FGC email address to send email-based fundraising appeals.
- There will be a link in the body of the email that connects you to our secure online donation form on our website, not a third-party fundraising website like GoFundMe. Also, FGC does NOT use mobile payment services like PayPal or Venmo to receive donations.
- We will NOT make fundraising asks on behalf of campaigns to benefit individuals, like a fundraiser for medical care, rent support, or legal expenses.
Most importantly, when you donate directly to FGC through our website or through an eblast we send, you will receive an email confirmation shortly after you’ve made it. We want to let you know right away how much we value your support!