As you may be aware that an Embrace email was hacked last Friday the 14th of October. This occurred at 6:46pm, and we now know that it originated in South Africa. We became aware within an hour of the hack, and took appropriate measures to deal with the situation. The matter has been reported to Victoria Police.

Whilst the hacker only had use of the account between 6:46pm and 8:30pm, this was enough time to send spam email to many people who have previously been in email contact with us. We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused. Fortunately access was not gained to our website database system and no volunteer/student details have been compromised. Additionally it does not appear that individual emails were accessed.

Once again we take our security very seriously, and have already spent considerable funds upgrading our security this year. We will nevertheless be thoroughly reviewing our processes to see if there is anything more we can do to prevent this or any similar incident in the future.

Thanks for your understanding. If you did reply to one of the spam emails and provide money to the hacker (believing the email to be legitimate), please contact us immediately and we will help you to follow it up with Victoria Police.

The Embrace Team