Beware of the scams targeting your inbox.

There has been recent email scams sent to brethren recently. Email scams occur when your email address is discovered by scammers who will then attempt to hack you and scam you.

This usually occurs because people emailing you are not blind copying your email address when contacting you (blind copying hides any email addresses in the communication so others can’t discover it). It is the BCC usually seen in your email client such as Thunderbird or Outlook.

Here is a recent example (Note – explicitly the ‘from’ email address always doublecheck these).

In the following example, the domain name has been replaced by xxxx so that the grandmaster does not get spammed

“ From: Jim Watt grandmaster.xxxx@gmail.com
Date: 16 June 2025 at 10:36:28 AM NZST
To: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Greetings to you (email recipient’s name)
Hello! How are you doing today? Are you less busy at the moment? I got a request
for you to manage discreetly. I will be going into a meeting shortly, please no calls,
kindly respond back via email.
Fraternally,
MW Bro Jim Watt
Grand Master
New Zealand Freemason ”

Did you spot the issue? In fact, our Grand Master’s email address is grand.master@xxxx.org

Crooks will try to convinced you to part with your money sometimes not directly. They are VERY good and VERY convincing.

I would also very strongly advise not to click a link in an email as it can install malware or spyware on your device (think viruses). These can be use to steal your credentials (username/password) for your online banking (for example) or they can also be used to steal your identity. Some anti-virus companies test the target of links in your email, but they are not 100 accurate.