A Tennessee woman has been the victim of a phishing scam in which she was told she’d won a government grant. Apparently she had applied for an SBA grant through Grants.gov and then received an e‑mail, evidently from another source, congratulating her on winning an award. More details are in this local-news-and-therefore-poorly-written article.
Clearly, the victim of this fraud should have been more cautious about handing out her financial information. But this case points out that, as the grant process goes online and Grants.gov becomes more well known, more people are likely to be snared by any fraud that looks and feels like a Grants.gov communication.
The article doesn’t mention Grants.gov — why do you think the woman had her information phished from Grants.gov?
Hi Sara — thanks for your feedback. I don’t know whether Grants.gov had anything to do with the scam that befell this woman. I do think, however, that as Federal grants business is conducted more and more through e‑mail, it’s significantly more likely that phishing scams will exploit systems like Grants.gov, in the same way that they exploit eBay and PayPal.