Chamber falls victim to 'data scraping'

Monday 18 December 2023

The Chamber of Commerce has issued a scam warning after businesses were offered the opportunity to purchase a list of its members.

In an email alert to members today, the island's key business lobby group explained that it had fallen victim to 'data scraping', with publicly available email addresses of members harvested and packaged up for sale.

Some businesses had also been sent invoices for £175 and follow-up emails chasing payment, Chamber reported.

The matter has been reported to the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner (JOIC) and Chamber's own data protection managers, Propelfwd, are trying to contact the perpetrators.

Pictured: Chamber's warning to its members today.

"To be clear, this is not a data breach or any lapse in our own security. This list contains publicly available email addresses," Chamber said, going on to urge anyone who receives such an email to ignore it and forward it to Propelfwd (chamber@propelfwd.com), who are collating the complaint to the JOIC.

"We would strongly urge you not to respond to these emails, but to delete them and treat any invoices with suspicion and regard them as ‘scam emails’," the business body added.