The town’s library was the victim of a scam e-mail, purportedly from one of its board members, sent out over the weekend. Systems already in place at the library, and the quick alert from some of the e-mail’s recipients, leaves library representatives hopeful that no one fell prey to the scam.

Calling it “straightforward” in its message, C.H. Booth Library Director Doug Lord told The Newtown Bee on March 1 that the e-mail was “one of those pretty sloppy ones.”

Lord noted that several people forwarded or called the library when they received the unexpected note two days earlier.

The e-mail opened without any salutation, simply saying, “Are you available to assist” before asking recipients to buy “gift cards for donations to Veterans at Hospice and Palliative care units for personal protective equipment from Corona virus (COVID-19).”

A copy of the scam note was shared with The Newtown Bee. The note was dated February 27 and said the sender was “out of the state, and I’ve got credence in you to take care of this.” Among red flags that consumers are told to be aware of, that line is in the top ten.

Further, it read, “I would have called your phone, but presently I do not have access to my mobile phone.” Another red flag.

Attributed to Amy Dent, president of the library’s board of trustees, the note also said the gift cards were sought because “I have decided to make it a personal duty. I will be responsible for the reimbursement.”

Dent had no idea what had happened when her phone started ringing last weekend, she said.

“I was in the middle of painting, and people started calling me about this,” she said Tuesday afternoon. Fortunately, anyone who called her was also wise enough to not click through the e-mail or act on its request, she said.

“One person contacted the police and shared the note with them right after we hung up,” Dent said.

The library’s director is very confident, he said this week, that the library’s systems were not breached.

“The library’s e-mail marketing tools, social media accounts, and donor fundraising software are all healthy and remain secure,” Lord said in a statement issued March 1. “The library follows industry guidelines as to password protection including multi-factor authentication whenever possible. As a library we are especially careful regarding patron data.

“The library’s integrated library system [ILS] uses a Palo Alto firewall to protect traffic on the network. The firewall establishes silos to mitigate the very unlikely event that any infections — there have never been any — are isolated from other libraries on the network.

“The library’s ILS servers are housed in secure data centers that are geographically separated. All access to the servers is via encrypted communication channels. Consortial staff access to the servers is only via secure methods. The library does not store any patron information in the cloud, and all patron data is backed up to local redundant servers,” Lord’s statement continued.

Just two months ago, the library refreshed its program of internal security and staff training around passwords, fraud, red flags, and digital hygiene, Lord also noted.

“Further, the C.H. Booth Library subscribes fully to the American Library Association’s Code of Ethics and Library Bill of Rights to acknowledge the paramount importance of library patron privacy: ‘We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired, or transmitted.’

“In short, the C.H. Booth Library takes patron confidentiality and data security very seriously and I am confident in our methods and practices,” he said in closing.