As you may have noticed, scammers seem to be as busy as ever these days! NOTIS would like to remind all members to remain extremely vigilant when reading and responding to emails — even to messages sent to you through the NOTIS directory page.
While we've taken measures to shield our directory from scammers, your directory information is public by default (so that colleagues and legitimate potential clients can reach you). Unfortunately, this means that people with wrongful intentions can email you too.
To further protect yourself, you can easily change the privacy settings on your member profile so that members of the public cannot contact you through the NOTIS system. To do this, click on your name at the top right corner of our home page (you must first log in), go to the “Privacy” tab, and click “Edit profile”; then, set the “Send message form” field to “Anybody,” (NOTIS) “Members” (only), or “No access” (see screenshots below). NOTE: There are several other privacy settings you can edit on this same page, according to your preferences. If you do want to be contacted regarding legitimate work offers, we recommend you keep your email address visible.
Please, in general, exercise caution when reading — and screening — emails from people you don’t know, especially when something about the message strikes you as odd. For example:
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if the person claims to be from a large company but is using a free email domain (such as yahoo.com or gmail.com)
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if the message is generic and vague
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if the offer seems too good to be true, or
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if the person asks you to send them money or share personal information.
If anything seems suspicious, the best strategy is not to respond. It can also help to do an online search, inputting, for example, the sender’s email address or the body of the message between quotation marks, to see if others have received the same message and identified it as a scam. Additionally, you can check on the legitimacy of a potentially suspicious offer by asking your colleagues in online forums such as one of the following Facebook Groups:
Please contact NOTIS at info@notisnet.org if you receive an email through the NOTIS directory and you’re not sure it’s legitimate. We will be more than happy to review it with you and offer our opinion.
To get an idea of what some of the latest email scams look like, check out these recent social media posts detailing:
Here are some additional resources for guidance:
