One Of The Problems Of Getting Your Events Noticed!
Plus advice for event organisers
How annoying is this?
The Women In Business Big Show 2021 is getting noticed. Sounds great and, of course, it is, but stuff comes at a bit of a price.
When you run an event that looks like lots of exhibitors and visitors will attend, it can also become an attractive proposition for crooks intent on phishing.
What they do is scrape (software that takes email addresses in bulk) email addresses from websites like LinkedIn and Facebook where people have showed they’re attending and then send them an email offering them what they think are attractive enough to convince people to click on a link or share their payment details.
The common offering is the attendee list. Next in line is a special deal with ‘Partner’ hotels nearby.
It’s fun to join in online with a community of like-minded people who are going to the same event, and you don’t have to miss out. The most obvious thing is to ignore the email, and I can’t say it really bothers me as I just forward them to report@phishing.gov.uk take no more notice.
If you really don’t want to get any emails, you can leave out the @ in the address on any websites, including social media sites (replace it with something else, like a bracket or other symbol) which means the website scrapers these scammers use find it harder to find your email.
The important thing is to not respond, and don’t share any details.
Always check the email address is legitimate and the critical thing is to check with the organiser if it’s asking for payment details or there’s a link to click.
And, be kind to the organiser of the event (like me) because they can’t do anything much about it and it means they’re doing well getting lots of people interested and getting the event notices.
#justsaying lol
- Make sure your Privacy Policy is up to date and relevant to what you do.
- Consider publishing advice on your event website advising exhibitors and attendees they could get Phishing emails and how they should treat them.
- If you promote your exhibitors on your website, and include exhibitor emails, replace the @ with another symbol and this makes it harder for the scammers to ‘scrape’ the information.
- Keep a simple line of communication, which means attendees know where they should get emails from and which are going to be genuine.
- Understand there’s not that much you can do to stop it.
- Advise your community on how to report any phishing emails. In the UK, they can forward the email to report@phishing.gov.uk
Above all, don’t let these crooks to spoil your event. Keep on promoting and enjoy!