Look out for scammers impersonating DOGE

Happy Friday  Yes, they're are at it again. According to new research published by Proofpoint, scammers are impersonating DOGE, the "Department of Government Efficiency," to steal and sell your private information. They're taking advantage of the uncertainty surrounding government downsizing and tricking victims into believing that they're eligible for compensation.

The emails claim to come from the DOGE Coordination Unit and that you've been assigned to a specific agent (ahem, scammer) "authorized by the federal government to issue tax refunds to eligible citizens from funds recovered from improper government expenditures." If you reply, the "agent" will send you a PDF form to fill out for "compensation." What's really going on here is that the form is asking for your personally identifiable information (PII), which then gets used for fraud and identity theft.

It should come as no surprise that these emails appear to be originating from southern Nigeria.

The Takeaway Federal employees and those who may have been affected by the budget cuts should be on alert for these kinds of targeted scams. Here are the top 3 things to remember:

1. Check the sender's domain. Don’t just look at the display name, but check the full email address. Look for subtle misspellings or domain lookalikes, like .net instead of .gov, or amaz0n.co instead of amazon.com. If an email pretends to be from an official entity but uses a free email service like Gmail or Outlook, that's a big red flag. Real agencies don't send sensitive communications from personal accounts.

2. Don't trust attachments. I'm sure you know this by now, but stranger danger on this one - don't take attachment candy from strangers. Attachment danger is at an all-time high and even if you know the sender, unless you're specifically waiting for an attachment to come in, don't open it.

3. Don't interact. Sometimes people tell me that they "mess with the scammers" and start interacting with them, particularly by text messages. Responding confirms that you're a real person from their potential pool of victims. It's only going to backfire on you, as they'll move you up the ladder, targeting you for their next level of better and more sophisticated scams.

During the early weeks of DOGE’s rollout, some of the real government emails looked suspicious. The tone and formatting were so off that even federal employees flagged them as spam. If the government can't make their emails look legit, it's no wonder the scammers are having a field day. It's up to us to use our heads and keep ourselves safe.

Stay safe out there. -Attila

The Positivity Box

This week Microsoft released its monthly security update for July of 2025, which includes 132 vulnerabilities affecting a range of products, including 14 that Microsoft marked as “critical.” The good news is that Microsoft observed none of the vulnerabilities being actively exploited in the wild. Good job Microsoft in getting ahead of the bad guys!

New Friday Funnies!

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What kind of dog doesn't bark?

A hushpuppy.

What kind of dog race doesn't have any losers?

When they're all weiners.

What do dogs say in Iceland?

Bjark.

Why don't blind people sky dive?

Because it scares the heck out of their seeing eye dogs.