Notification

Spam Mail 

On Friday (19th of July) a spam email message was sent out from the address accounts@wildquest.com to a list of about 2,000 email recipients, most of whom are or recently have been customers of Wildquest Limited.

The message consisted of well crafted emails concerning amounts of money that were within a reasonable range for what our clients might be paying (though not exact amounts). And all emails were worded slightly differently. It had an attached Word document which requested bank details and which tests have indicated contained suspected virus or malware material.

Over the past weekend, the IT team at Wildquest have been investigating this email and its implications for our customers’ data, especially with regard to the EU General Data Protection Regulations (‘GDPR’). As a result, we have established that the data utilised by the spammers was limited to email addresses with no associated personal data. No personal names were included, nor addresses or any financial data whatsoever. The email addresses alone could not be associated with any individual’s private data.

We want to apologise to all of you who received this spam email for any anxiety, inconvenience or concern it may have caused you. You should ignore and delete the message, and not open the attachment.

We know that approximately one-third of the messages were rejected by mail servers before delivery as suspicious. If you opened the email but not the attachment, there would be no problem. If you inadvertently opened the attached Word document, your computer anti-virus software should have been triggered and protected you. However, if you do not have up-to-date anti-virus software installed and opened the attachment, our IT department recommend the following steps:

• If you clicked on it and nothing happened – no problem.
• If the document opened in MS Word, it will ask for permission to run macros. Say ‘no’.
• If you said ‘yes’, it may show a form to fill in bank details. Do not complete this form.
• Install antivirus software and run a scan of your computer.
• Change all your passwords, in particular related to financially sensitive web sites.
• If you opened the document attachment and allowed the macros, and have made any financially sensitive transactions over the web since receiving it, contact your bank and card issuer to ensure that no suspicious activity has occurred. If you detect something untoward, seek their advice to protect you from any risk of loss.

We want to assure our customers that we take data protection very seriously. At this stage after our in-depth investigation, we believe this data loss was very limited. As a result of the investigation, we have implemented various steps to further protect the data we hold from unauthorized access. Should you have any concerns about this, please contact us on data@wildquest.com and we will respond to any concerns.

WildQuest Ltd.
Unit 5C Yeo Vale, Lapford, Crediton, Devon EX17 6YQ, UK

Date: 26 July 2019