After three known attempts to scam people who have filed building applications with the Columbia River Gorge Commission, agency staff began in late August to black out contact information on the applications available to view online. This includes the street address of the property proposed for development, and in most cases, the addresses of adjacent property owners as well.
“If people need to know who an owner of a particular property is or any other details besides the fact that a permit was issued, or it’s pending, then they can call us directly,” Gorge Commission executive director Krystyna Wolniakowski told Uplift Local. “Even though we want to be transparent, we want to be very cognizant of how this information can be misused.”
Tax lot numbers are still visible online, which can be used to look up street addresses through county property records. Wolniakowski stressed that original permit applications, with no information redacted, are kept on file and available “as long as we know that it’s an authentic request as opposed to a phishing request.”
“We want to really protect people and make sure that they feel like their privacy is respected,” Wolniakowski said. “Anytime anyone is violating somebody’s security and phishing for any amount of money, it’s a big deal.”
Even contact information for the power company PacifiCorp and for a company that filed a permit on behalf of Verizon Wireless is blacked out on pending land use applications.
Scammers typically contact people by email, instructing them to pay permit fees. One phishing attempt sent Aug. 3 that was designed to appear as if it were from the Gorge Commission requested over $18,000.
The first clue such requests are fake? The Gorge Commission does not charge fees for the building permit applications that its staff handles.
Within hours of receiving an alert about the Aug. 3 scam email, Gorge Commission land use planner Mackenzie Aamodt emailed more than three dozen people who either had active land use applications or who had lost property in last year’s Burdoin fire and contacted the commission, but had not yet applied to rebuild.
“Starting immediately, the Gorge Commission will begin redacting the mailing and site addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of applicants and landowners from notices of development review, staff reports, decisions, and other development review materials sent to the public or posted on the Gorge Commission’s website,” Aamodt wrote.
The August email was the third phishing attempt pretending to be from the Gorge Commission this year; the others were in March and June. In the earlier instances, staff also alerted permit applicants, but only decided to redact information after the August incident.
The fake emails affected people applying for permits just in the Klickitat County portion of the National Scenic Area, because Klickitat is the only county where Gorge Commission planners, rather than county staff, review and approve Scenic Area building permits.
However, such phishing attempts have affected enough planning departments around the country that the FBI issued a warning about the practice in March. Locally, different planning departments have responded in different ways.
For example, Wasco County began redacting personal information from building permit applications about six months ago, according to Kelly Howsley-Glover, the county’s community development director. Skamania County doesn’t black out information, but recently posted an alert to permit applicants to be aware of scams. Hood River County’s planning department website hosts a similar alert.
Wolniakowski said the Gorge Commission has no idea who is behind the phishing attempts, and it’s unclear what the FBI may have done beyond posting a warning. The federal agency declined answer questions from Uplift Local about the number of reports of scams using information from building or zoning permits it has received, or whether its agents have located any suspects or made any arrests.
Emily Harris is a co-founder and Uplift Local's Community Journalism Director, overseeing the local newsroom network and the Documenters program.
