According to a news report released this morning, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has announced that an e-mail is circulating to employers with the message that the EEOC is filing a harassment complaint against the employer.

CAUTION!  This is a fraudulent spam message. Worse yet, it contains links to sites that give your computer a virus. 

The EEOC believes this fraudulent message is originating from an malicious overseas spammer.

Our Approach to Potential Spam and Viruses:

Here at my office we do NOT reply to or click on any links from seemingly official warnings or requests arriving via email.  If we have a question about an email’s authenticity, we contact the alleged sending organization by some other means. 

For example, we independently do a search (e.g., Google) for how to contact the ‘alleged’ sender, and then do so independently via telephone or via an email we initiate ourselves.

This method has been very effective in keeping us free from getting phished or picking up a computer virus.

If it’s legit and they want to get a hold of you, they will:

A few months back we received an email message that looked very much like phishing spam, even though the “sender” line indicated it originated from a recognized vendor. We chose to ignore it, figuring they’d get a hold of us another way if it was real and if they felt it was important enough.

 Two weeks later the vendor sent some snail mail making the same request.  Don’t forget: There’s also the telephone — an oft-forgotten useful piece of technology.

Regarding the EEOC email, be confident that if the EEOC wants to get a hold of you about a complaint, they will not be using email to do it.  If you ever have doubts, call them yourself. Don’t trust the links provided.

Naturally I recommend all companies set forth overly-cautious email policies just to be safe, but check w/ your IT team and find out what they recommend.  Our take: ALWAYS better to be safe than sorry.

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