Email scammers continue to pretend to be your staff and ask you to reply to them. Please know your pastors/staff will never ask you to purchase gift cards confidentially. We will also try to be more clear, less vague, than a scammer. Finally, we will never tell you “do not call”—you’re always welcome to call the church if you’re not sure if a communication is a scam.
Here is one way to recognize a scam, even when your pastor’s name and photo are attached to the email.
- Click on the sender’s name (in the picture below, it says “Rev. Sharon A. Benton” sent the email).
- Once you click on the sender’s name, you should be able to see the real address of the sender (in this photo the sender is “bsharon.fccb@gmail.com”). Your staff will almost always send an email from an address @fccb.net (sometimes we will send from an address @breezechms.com—Breeze is our church management software system).
- For example, Pastor Sharon’s emails will only come to you from sharon@fccb.net or sharon_rt+fccb@breezechms.com.
We hope this is helpful as you try to stay safe.
