Lots of folks at progressive nonprofits are freaked out because they see mailing list signups from [email protected] and other .gov email addresses and think that they are being monitored by the feds.
That is a REAL email address that the federal government is using to let people snitch on their coworkers if they are secretly doing DEIA work.
But I don't think the gov't is doing it to spy on orgs. These are public newsletters with (hopefully) non-sensitive content.
So, this is my take on what's happening, from most to least likely:
1) Individual or organized assholes are signing up real and fake opm.gov email addresses to scare people (apparently some of the signups are from addresses like [email protected])
2) The federal government are signing up the real email address to intimidate organizers, or
3) Someone who hates what's the federal government is doing thinks they are clever and are subscription bombing them on purpose to inundate the inbox with actual DEIA stuff, but don't get that they're scaring the very organizations they support.
My suggestions for orgs who are experiencing this:
1) Change the settings on your mailing list providers so that people need to click a link in a signup confirmation email in order to complete the signup. That way people who are signing up from fake email addresses can't complete the signup.
2) Remove any opm.gov email addresses who successfully signed up, mostly for peace of mind.
3) Don't ever share anything sensitive or private in your public newsletters!!!
#digisec #fud #nonprofit
Jack Aponte
Ken M
Digital Defenders Partnership