Update on Phishing Emails

Dear Trinity community,

You may have heard that someone posing as Morgan Allen perpetrated a phishing scam targeted to Trinity's ministry leaders.  Through working with our online service providers and scouring our own website, we found how the email addresses of approximately 50 ministry leaders were obtained - from the PDF of the 2016 Annual Ministry Report, the back page of which was a list of ministry leaders.  These ministry leaders have all been contacted by me directly. 

This Report has been taken off the website, and we are doing our best to ensure that no other PDFs or other attachments on the site share direct contact information.

At Trinity Church, we take your privacy and security very seriously.  It is our policy and conscientious practice not to share email addresses via our website and other electronic communications.  On the website, we have in place a secure web form that allows anyone interested in a ministry to contact a lay leader without having to a share direct address.

Working with my colleagues, we are exploring ways we might institute additional safety practices so we can avoid sharing any contact data ever again.

In the meantime, I know you're concerned about how you can protect yourself.  Here's what we know:

• Trust that no member of the staff will ever solicit you - by phone, by email, or by any other means - for gift cards or cash.
   
• Be confident that no member of the staff will correspond with you from an address other than one ending in the trinitychurchboston.org domain.
   
• If you receive an odd or suspicious email, trust your instincts, and check the email address.  Do not reply - but pick up the phone and call the sender to see if the request is legitimate.
   
• If you receive a suspicious email posing as a Trinity staff person, please let us know and also report it to your email provider. This can enable them to restrict use of emails. It's an easy click of a button, but slightly different for every provider. Check with your email provider directly to learn how to report phishing email.

We are very sorry for the trouble and concern this may have caused you. We hope you will take comfort in knowing that this will not happen again.  

Most sincerely,

Patricia Hurley

Director of Communications

 

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