Possible BC email scam

[jonhd]

Arrived in my Inbox like this (my email client believes it to be a scam):

==========================================================================
Dear Jon

Butterfly Conservation constantly strives to improve the range of benefits and special offers it is able to present to its supporters.

As part of this process we would like to invite you to complete a short survey about your membership. This should only take about four minutes.

Please click on the link below to start the survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/92BQVNM

Thank You


Robert Pitts
Butterfly Conservation
==========================================================================

The sender obviously knows my first name - so, if this IS a scam, has BC's database been compromised?
I'm suspicious because the surveymonkey url is not to surveymonkey at all, but to a website whose address begins http://dmtrk.com - typical of a hijacked server scam...

[Susie]

I've received the same thing.

[LauraS56]

Have you contacted BC?

I haven't had anything of this sort.

[jonhd]

I'll try & find Mr. Robert Pitts' email address - hope his email client doesn't reject my approach as spam

Jon

[Pete Eeles]

Looks genuine enough to me. Robert's email (and yes, he really exists!) is rpitts@butterfly-conservation.org

Cheers,

- Pete

[Neil Hulme]

Hi Jon,

It's always a good idea to be wary of any un-solicited emails, but I agree with Pete in that it looks genuine. The dodgy stuff is usually either phishing for personal information of some sort in order to attempt fraud... or just plain destructive, by spreading viruses etc. But this seems to be just a handful of innocuous and rather standard marketing questions, requiring no input of personal data. Robert Pitts is the relatively new Head of Fundraising at BC HQ. If I have time today I'll double-check by ringing them.

Neil

[jonhd]

Thanks Neil - I did send BC's "info@" emaill address a message last night, asking them to verify the unsolicited email. Am unable to check my personal email at work, so don't know wether they've replied yet.
I'm reasonably computer literate (a networks bloke at work), and that's why alarm bells rang - my email client (Thunderbird) shows the underlying URL in any 'link' within an email. And, as I said, the actual URL that was actioned under the http://www.surveymonkey.com/... text was something completely different - typical of phishing attacks.
I'm sure it's perfectly OK, but better safe than sorry!

Cheers, Jon

[Jack Harrison]

It MIGHT be genuine but that does not get away from the fact that if it is. then it is a stupid way for BC to behave.

Surveymonkey for goodness' sake. NOBODY could take that name seriously. I cannot beieve it is genuine.

PS I won £2million last month - from Nigeria.

Jack

[Pete Eeles]

surveymonkey is quite widely used for online surveys. But unless you've used it before, you wouldn't know! Google, eBay, Facebook and Twitter all sound so sensible

Cheers,

- Pete

[Jack Harrison]

surveymonkey is quite widely used for online surveys

Well, all I can say is that if they use such a ridiculous name then they must anticipate very biassed survey results.


Jack

[jonhd]

Sorry to drone on, but to re-iterate, embellish, and update:
- I do know of surveymonkey, and it's purpose
- The actual link 'attached' to the surveymonkey url was to a completely different site (probably why my email client decided the messahe was possibly a scam)
- The email subject was "Benefits and Special Offers" - not what the email was about!
- I have not received a reply from BC's "info@" email address (sent them a query on Thursday)

Jon

[MikeOxon]

Sorry to drone on

No need to apologise - you took reasonable action in the face of the evidence. If it is genuine, then it should have been presented in a better way than this - and why has no-one come forward from BC to explain?

In these suspicious times, reputable organisations need to be aware that their intentions must be crystal clear and that vague survey requests are not acceptable.

Mike

[jdriscoll]

Dear Jon

Sorry that the email caused you confusion. It is a genuine email from Butterfly Conservation inviting you to complete a short survey about your membership.

SurveyMonkey is widely used by organisations for online surveys (yes I agree the name is silly!) We used a service called DotMailer to send out the email and they automatically add the http://dmtrk.com to the link but when you click on the link it still takes you to the correct SurveyMonkey website page.

Apologies you did not get a response on Friday but we get a large number of enquiries to our @info mailbox and your query was only been passed on to me this morning.

Kind regards


James Driscoll
Head of IT
Butterfly Conservation

[jonhd]

Thank you James - call me hyper-cautious [in fact, call me whatever you like ], but I'd suggest you don't include links to external websites (within 'bulk' emails) - better to have a link to a page on the BC website, which explains the Survey raison-d'etre (again!), and then takes you off to the external site. I suspect a fairly high proportion of anti-virus / spam protection / etc. software will simply reject your email...

Best Regards, Jon