Alert: Spoofed Email Appears to Come from ALTA President

ALTA is alerting its members of phishing emails with "ALTA" and the company name in the subject line.

Like title and settlement companies, email from ALTA leadership and staff can be spoofed. In the latest scheme, a phishing email appears to come from ALTA President Don Kennedy telling recipients that ALTA's regulatory department has made multiple attempts to contact them to deliver a notice that requires attention. Note the fraudulent email address in the image. This is a phishing email. ALTA’s system was not breached. Your information is safe.

Do not open the attachment, respond or click any links in the email. In addition, you should contact your IT department and block the domain of the email or the IP address that it is coming from. Once the scammers catch on, they will likely switch email domains.

It's recommended to take extra precaution when reviewing email on smart phones as it can be difficult to see the actual email address behind the sender's name.

ALTA will never contact you and ask for login/passwords, credentials, credit card information, or payments by phone or via email. If an ALTA member is ever concerned about whether a person contacting them by phone or email for any reason is employed by ALTA, they should end the communication or conversation and call ALTA at 800-787-2582 or email [email protected] for confirmation.

Tips to Protect Yourself

ALTA understands that phishing attempts can be very clever, but we encourage everyone to slow down. It’s always a good idea to:

1. Carefully review all email headers to be sure that messages are coming from people or companies who are known to them; when in doubt, forward the message to the intended recipient to be sure that a reply does not end up in the wrong hands.
2. Hover over any links in a message and see where a click will go – even links which appear to be a complete URL spelled out. Anything could be lurking beneath the that link.

What if You Fell for the Scam?

1. Call your credit card company using the phone number on the actual card or on the card-issuer’s website.
• Report fraud and review recent charges with a card-issuer representative.
• Have the credit card canceled/replaced.
• Consider freezing your credit if you provided additional non-public personal information while making the payment.
2. Report the incident to your IT department.
• Consider a scan of your computer for viruses or vulnerabilities if you used the computer to reply to the email or clicked on the URL in the body of the message.
• Consider changing your login/password information, especially if it’s stored for ease of use.