August 28, 2015

Email scams are targeting military servicemembers, retirees, and their families by posing as the Defense and Finance Accounting Service (DFAS).

The most recent scam looks like a “SmartDoc” email with the subject line “myPay IMPORTANT SECURITY UPDATE,” and appears to come from a DFAS-SmartDocs email address. The links provided in the emails direct the user to a malicious website that requests personal information.

Several attentive MOAA members provided an example of an email they recently received:

Dear Account Holder,

It has come to our attention that your myPay account information needs to be updated as part of our continued commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could please take 3 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service.

However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension.

Once you have updated your account records, your Online sessions will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. To update your myPay records click on the Update button.

Thank you,
myPay Customer Center

DFAS provided the following statement regarding this scam:

“Valid SmartDocs messages from DFAS are always sent in plain text, do not include attachments and do not ask you to send any information in response. Your email program may automatically convert a valid SmartDocs message into HTML and convert some text into clickable links. We recommend that you do NOT click on any links within any email message. To access a site referenced in an email, open your browser and type the link (URL) directly into the browser.

Don’t get fooled. If you receive a SmartDocs message that contains a link, don’t click on it. If a URL is listed in the message type it in manually within your browser. Delete unexpected or unsolicited messages that contain attachments or that request you to send information back.”

Online scams and cyber-attacks are increasing daily. MOAA members should be on alert for emails like this. Links that ask users to go to a website and submit personal information should always be taken as suspect.

When asked to follow a link, follow the advice provided by DFAS, and enter the URL manually into the browser for verification. While it may seem cumbersome to constantly be on guard about these issues, taking a few basic steps can protect yourself and your family from scam artists.

You can read the DFAS online protection guidelines at the following link: https://www.dfas.mil/pressroom/onlineprotection.html.