Phishing & Advance Fee Scams
You might receive emails pretending to be from legitimate sources, asking for personal or private information. This is known as phishing. The World Branding Forum is aware of fraudulent email messages being sent by individuals purporting to be representatives of the Forum or the World Branding Awards team.
There are several types of scam emails. They may be in the form of an invitation to a Forum event such as a conference or the World Branding Awards, an offer for Forum membership, or an employment offer. They will ask for some sort of response or reply. Eventually, they will try to ask for some form of payment as a deposit, processing fee or course fee, often via Western Union or MoneyGram. This is known as an advance fee scam.
Please take note of the following:
- Scam messages may appear to come from the Forum or Awards team, however, the “Reply To” address does not end in @brandingforum.org. Forum staff will never send emails using third-party email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
- The Forum owns the wbf.ac domain and may occasionally use this domain to receive messages, or to direct visitors to the Forum’s online properties, however, it does not use this domain to send out any messages.
- The World Branding Forum does not advertise or offer any employment via unsolicited emails.
- It is not possible to buy or purchase a World Branding Awards title or status. The awards are not for sale. Anything that suggests otherwise is fraudulent.
- Participation in the World Branding Awards gala dinner and ceremony is strictly by invitation only. The Forum only invites winners to the Awards ceremony. Any emails that suggest you can purchase seats at the Awards without knowing if you are a winner are fraudulent.
- The World Branding Forum does not use Western Union or MoneyGram to receive payments. The Forum currently uses a licensing agency to handle payments for the Awards. Both the Forum and its agency uses NatWest (National Westminster Bank Plc) for its banking requirements and no other bank.
- Payment on the World Branding Awards website are processed by Stripe and PayPal.
- Both the World Branding Forum and World Branding Awards website are secured (SSL) using Norton Secure by Symantec.
The World Branding Forum cannot be responsible or liable for any communication or payment made via unofficial channels.
If you are not sure of the authenticity of any communication from the World Branding Forum or the World Branding Awards team, please contact our Administrative team here, or call us on +44 (0) 20 3743 9880 or the Americas Team on +1 (212) 738 9990.
