Organisation information
Security Statement
From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Published on
Last updated on
The Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine has become aware of a number of farmers who recently received phone calls from a person purporting to work in this Department. The caller was looking for bank details, allegedly to recoup overpayments. On other occasions the caller is offering payments. Please note that this Department never seeks bank details or other personal information by phone or by text message or by email.
If you receive a telephone call purporting to be from this Department and seeking personal details you should always feel free to take the officer’s name and the name of their office and then ring them back using the contact numbers on our website (not a number that they give you).
Anyone who mistakenly provides personal information in response to these types of fraudulent phone calls should contact their bank or credit card company immediately and alert the Gardaí. It is important to point out that these types of scams in no way involve this Department’s systems or security.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine have become aware of fraudulent email messages, purporting to come from the Department, containing a link to a website seeking personal information. These emails did not issue from the Department.
Anyone who receives an unsolicited email and suspects it to be fraudulent or a scam should delete it immediately.
These “spear-phishing” emails have been recently targeting advisors and consultants (e.g. Pesticide consultants). Spear-phishing is a scam where bogus emails are sent to people in order to trick them into revealing personal or financial information. The Department never sends unsolicited emails, and will not ask you for personal details by email.
Anyone who may have provided personal information in response to these fraudulent email messages should change the password of their Gmail / Yahoo mail / Hotmail / AOL account immediately. Please see our security statement below for further information
The security of electronic information is very important to the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine.
To help protect yourself and your information, this section offers some practical security advice on using computers and the Internet. It is important to take these sensible steps to minimise the risk to your computer and your personal information.
The Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine supports the MakeITSecure campaign . This is an initiative aimed at providing advice on protecting your information when using computers and the Internet. Click on the link below for more details.