Dear Agent,

A scam has recently come to our attention that solicits donations through a spoofed twia.org email address. This email was not sent by TWIA. TWIA only provides insurance products and services and no TWIA employee or any other person acting on behalf of TWIA will ever ask for money outside of our established billing protocol.

TWIA has not been hacked. Emails like this one are sent by a third-party scammer using an email system outside of TWIA's network. Because this email was not sent by or from our systems, we cannot know who it went to. However, we are sending this bulletin to all agents so they may be aware of the situation.

There are many ways to guard against email spoofing scams, including:

  1. Being suspicious of any fundraising or donation requestested through email and calling the organization it claims to represent to verify the contents of the email.
  2. Forwarding the email to the Federal Trade Commission’s email reporting service: spam@uce.gov.
  3. Reporting suspicious emails as spam using the built-in spam reporting functionality of whatever email software the recipient of the unsolicited email is using. Here is information from the FTC that explains exactly how it’s done: https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0038-spam.
  4. General awareness and education. See the FBI’s site for some tips: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sandiego/news/press-releases/fbi-warns-public-of-disaster-scams.

In cases where a person has been the victim of an email scam and has suffered financial or other losses, they should immediately contact law enforcement and/or file a complaint with the FBI at https://www.ic3.gov/complaint/splash.aspx with a copy of the email received.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Agent Services at agentservices@twia.org or 800-788-8247.

Sincerely,

Texas Windstorm Insurance Association

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