Dear HAB Members,

It’s February already and time to gear up for our monthly meeting at Bilton Cricket Club. The meeting will start at 7.30pm so get there earlier for a quick chat before business commences. Some of the membership have requested a talk on the Masters Programme. This will take place during this meeting and if there is time after all your questions we can show part 2 of a DVD about different styles of riding. For first timers to a HAB meeting the address is Bilton Lane, Harrogate HG1 3DQ.

This is what the IAM say about the Masters Course. “The IAM RoadSmart Masters standard offers the ultimate challenge for civilian drivers and riders. Open to all current IAM RoadSmart members, our Masters programme provides true one-to-one mentoring support and guidance that will help you to attain the highest standard of civilian driving or riding ability in the country. There are no exemption qualifications to our Masters standard. On completion of the Masters programme, your name will be entered into the Masters Register.”

We have been getting very good attendances at our group meetings for the last few months and it would be great if this continues. It is not just an opportunity to get to hear interesting subjects from our guest speakers and fellow members but also a forum to meet new friends and fellow riders. Please keep up the good work!

On another note, there has been a spate of “spam” email messages going around the membership supposedly from a known contact. You may have seen these and probably spotted a fake. This is just scammers phishing email accounts and pretending to be someone else and attempting to extort money. This is not our HAB account that has been hacked. The way to deal with it is for the person who has been impersonated to change their password on their email account. Anyone who receives them just needs to not action and delete. Spam emails appearing to come from a trusted contact are likely a result of email spoofing or phishing (forged sender address) or a compromised account. Scammers use these to steal credentials or spread malware. Do not click links, reply, or open attachments; instead, verify by contacting the known contact via a different method (phone, text). 

You can get information to help avoid the scammers from:

https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/scams (no log in required). Or https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/phishing-scams or

Best wishes

Richard

Chairman