Government-wide emails mistaken as phishing scam

[Ray Bogan]

Before the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent federal government employees a buyout offer, it sent government-wide tests that were widely mistaken as a phishing scam. While the mass distribution turned out to be legitimate, it exposed a new system being utilized by the Trump Administration that some employees predicted would be used for large-scale layoffs. 

Federal employees in all departments received an email from the Office of Personnel Management that stated, “This is a test of a new distribution and response list. Please reply “YES” to this message.” 

Some employees thought it could be a scam, others spam. Even agency IT departments told workers not to respond while they investigated. 

OPM sent a follow up email that said it was a second test of a new email distribution and response list. 

A federal source told Straight Arrow News that the emails were suspicious because they were formatted differently than usual mass emails and they came directly from OPM, normally departments take messages from OPM and relay it to their employees. 

An employee posted in a Reddit thread for federal workers that a new email server was connected to OPM’s servers which he believed was being used to build lists of all federal employees to generate massive Reduction in Force (RIF) notices. 

A report in FedScoop.com revealed a lawsuit was filed against OPM for the use of the server. The suit said the servers were being used to store information without conducting the required privacy impact assessment. 

The two anonymous employees who filed the suit want the government to stop using it until the proper tests have been conducted.