Update On Spam Emails

1 November 2023

Further to our email yesterday regarding a spam email appearing to be sent from an old LOC account, we just wanted to confirm the steps we have taken to protect you and what you should do.

We have reported the matter to the ICO, Action Fraud, and the relevant email provider.

Please do not click on attachments that you are not sure about, or reply to any emails which ask for a favour, or anything unusual. The LOC will NEVER send requests like this from our email account and you should NEVER send personal information or respond to requests for money, gift vouchers or anything else.

The spam email appears to have been send to some older email contacts of the LOC, possibly as a result of an email we sent in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, which disclosed the “to” addresses of the mailing list, instead of “bcc”. We apologise again for this error and assure you that soon after we moved to using the Mailchimp platform which does not allow other people’s addresses to be shared by accident.  

The old account is blocked but the email provider’s safety and security team advise that it is still possible for email addresses to be “spoofed” so they could appear to come from us. They may also create email addresses similar to ours in order to try to dupe users, such as “hertslrc@gmail.com” which is NOT us!

We hope the above information is of help to you and we assure you that we take data security and privacy very seriously.

Further information on data protection and privacy is available from the ICO, HERE.

Should you have any questions, or wish to discuss the matter further, please email admin@hertsloc.org.uk

Thanks and kind regards

Hertfordshire LOC