Fleet Managers, Be Wary of an E-mail Purportedly from Fla. Highway Safety Agency

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is warning everyone about e-mail spam that surfaced this month. Fraudsters are using the department’s name and e-mail address, [email protected], to send e-mails that appear to be from DHSMV.

DHSMV stressed that its system has not been hacked, and the department has numerous measures in place to protect customers’ information. Rather, this is a type of spam where an e-mail is made to look like it is from a trusted source in order to trick the recipient into following a link that will lead to a website with malware. The name for this type of spam is “phishing.”

The e-mails look like receipts from online transactions with the department and include confirmation and tracking numbers. However, the numbers are not DHSMV tracking numbers, and the e-mail addresses of the recipients did not come from DHSMV’s database.

An indicator that the e-mail is fraudulent is that it comes from two senders: [email protected] and another address that varies and may look like a personal e-mail address. All Florida DHSMV e-mail addresses contain @flhsmv.gov as the domain, and DHSMV does not send transactional receipts from personal e-mail addresses.

If you receive one of these e-mails and did not make a recent transaction, the DHSMV recommends that you delete the message. If you have already opened the message, do not click any of the links within it. The e-mails are not from DHSMV, and the links embedded within take recipients to non-DHSMV websites that may contain malware.