Phishing and Spoofing email

Phishing:

Please remember we will never send you an anonymous style message about a full mailbox, expired password, not paid the bill etc, asking you to log in, in an email which may look as if it has been automated from the mail server.

We are confident that most people are savvy about this now and realise if they are tricked to go to a bad site and put in their email password, their email address will be used to send spam, or worse.

VCS will never send you any automated message like this. Any communication would be addressed to you in person with specific mention of the issue, should there ever be one.

Spoofing:

There is currently a propensity for guessing email addresses in local govt websites and sending the scam of the type:

"Hello Fred, I am in a meeting and can't talk, can you do me a favour?   Jill Bates, Chair of Parish Council"

And then if you reply they ask you to buy an Amazon or iTunes voucher for them, or to lend money etc etc.

The "Fred" will be you and the "Jill Bates" will be the Chair's real name - they get the names information off the website, and then send load of spam emails guessing the email format to send it to by choosing from common patterns:

cllr.fred.smith@...  , cllr.fredsmith@... , clr.fred.smith@...  fsmith@ ... etc and one of them may get through to you as it is the format your council uses.

Please don't reply if possible, and certainly ignore.
Your email client (mail app) should show the email is sent from "alexi [at] scammers.ru" or whatever, and not actually from your Chair!

(If not, I suggest getting advice from your own device support on how to make the real email address be visible on your system.)