CEO fraud is a common form of spearphishing where scammers use publicly available information to impersonate company leadership, then ask for money or personal information to be sent urgently. Participants in Kairos programs including SPAR have reported receiving emails like the following relatively frequently:

We want to remind you of a few important points about how we communicate:

• We will (probably) never message you asking you to take action sooner than EOD.
  • Urgency is a huge strategy to try and scam people.
• Any legitimate email from us will typically relate to SPAR or other AI safety topics.
• Official SPAR emails always come from an @kairos-project.org address. We also own [email protected], but this account is less used.

For personal matters, we’ll usually reach out on Slack. Email is reserved for program-wide announcements and reminders to complete SPAR tasks.

If you ever receive a message that looks suspicious, please:

1. Verify the sender’s email address.
2. Reach out to us through another platform, like Slack, to confirm.
3. Let us know right away if this happens and send pictures.
4. Do not reply to the suspicious email. Report it instead.

Thanks for helping keep our community secure!