Phishing Email Advisory

RCMP Veterans’ Association

Veterans Helping Veterans and Their Families

This information is being provided to all Association Members

Email Advisory – Phishing

Dear Association Members,

One of our members from Kingston Division received an email message yesterday that appeared to be a phishing attempt.  I’m sure that virtually all of us have received these things that tell you the sky is falling and that you must click the link below to save yourself from oblivion.  Some of them are quite clever and go so far as to mimic say, a Bell Canada message or Bank of Montreal etc.

The usual intent of these emails is to acquire some of your information – your bank login is a favourite for obvious reasons.  In the case of our member the attempt was to acquire his login information for the Association website.  It asked him to click on a link to set his password on the Association site.

Luckily enough the links did not work, and our member was sufficiently suspicious to report this.

We are asking you to be aware that this is happening and exercise the normal caution that these days everybody is asked to employ.

In the case of this message it originated from,
RCMP Veteran’s Association / Association des anciens de la GRC webmaster@rcmpva.org

And in the subject line showed,
[RCMP Veteran’s Association / Association des Vétéran de la GRC] Your username and password info

And asked the user – “To set your password, visit the following address:” with the defective links underneath.

As may be seen in the originating area the words des anciens is no longer in use by the Association and in the Subject line Vétéran is not plural.

These kinds of errors are the first clue that the email is not genuine.  If you hover your mouse over the link(s) in the mail and look at the bottom left of your screen you will see the actual address of the link and it is usually an address that has nothing to do with the Association.

It should also be noted that the Association will not ask for this type of information and if you do receive a request like this please advise us.

Again, this is a cautionary message only and hopefully there will be no further instances.