FTC warns about email scam masking as party invitations
The Federal Trade Commission is warning partygoers everywhere about a new phishing scam involving event invitations.
In a May 26 blog post, the FTC sounded the alarm on "You’re invited" texts and emails that are actually phishing scams.
"Scammers send unexpected messages that look like they're from well-known invitation platforms like Evite or Paperless Post," the FTC post says. The invitation may then ask users to share login credentials, according to the warning.
"This is just a scammer trying to steal (or reset) your account information. If they get in, they might take over your email account and send the same scam to your contacts," the FTC warns.
Alyssa Williamson was leaving a yoga class in New York City when she got an email from a college classmate that looked like an alumni event.
"When I clicked on the link, it opened up into a Gmail login," she told "Good Morning America" in an interview.
Williamson said a few hours later, she began receiving messages from friends asking about an e-invitation that she had sent out, unbeknownst to her.
"I texted a bunch of my friends telling them not to open it, and then I changed all of my passwords," Williamson said of the realization she had been scammed.
Alexis Moser, who runs a preschool in Whittier, California, received a similar invitation that looked authentic.
"I enter my password, did the multi-factor authentication, which I've done tons of times for many other websites, so I really didn't think anything of it," Moser told "Good Morning America."
Moser said hours later she was bombarded with undeliverable emails from people she had not spoken to in years.
Moser said scammers took the information she had entered to view the invitation to log into her bank account.
"I opened up the transaction history, and I noticed that there were three different transactions and they total like $5,500," she said.
Moser's bank eventually replenished her missing funds in a new account, and she reset her passwords.
Online invitation companies spoke to ABC News about the frequency of these phishing scams.
"We see a few hundred reports a week," said Paperless Post President Alexa Hirschfeld, adding that scams are still a very small number compared to real invitations sent each week.
"Anything that's asking you to download an attachment is a red flag. Anything that asks you to log in or register to do something basic like reply is a red flag," she said.
Matt Douglas, the CEO of Sincere Corporation, which owns Punchbowl, said there are clear signs an invitation is fake. Examples include if an image won't load, logos are the wrong size or text does not align.
Douglas also recommended examining URLs closely.
"We strongly encourage people to hover over that URL and never, ever put in information that doesn't seem to be right," he said.
Evite also said the single most reliable indicator when determining an invite is real is the sender’s email address.
All of these sites say they have direct email contacts where you can reach out to ask if an invite is a scam.
The FTC offers security recommendations such as keeping security software up to date on your technology, using two-factor authentication and acting quickly if you think you've been scammed.
