What is Phishing?
Phishing is when criminals use fake emails to lure you into clicking on them and handing over your personal information, or installing malware on your device. It’s easy to avoid a scam email, but only once you know what to look for. There has been an increase in phishing, fraud, and scam emails. Fake job postings, Mailbox storage is full, change or expired password, etc., come as unsolicited emails sent directly to your account or through an online job listing sites. We advise students, faculty, and staff to avoid being scam victims by following these guidelines:
- Contains an offer that’s too good to be true
- Language that’s urgent, alarming, or threatening
- Poorly-crafted writing with misspellings and bad grammar
- Greetings that are ambiguous or very generic
- Requests to send personal information
- Urgency to click on an unfamiliar hyperlinks or attachment
- Strange or abrupt business requests
- Sending email address doesn’t match the company it’s coming from
Danger! Beware if the email or job posting includes:
- Does not indicate a company name
- Comes from an email address that doesn’t match the company name
- Offers to pay a large amount of money in exchange for little to no work
- Offers you a job without ever interacting with you
- Asks you to pay an application fee
- Wants you to transfer money from one account to another
- Offers to send you a check before you do any work
- Asks you to give your credit card or bank account numbers
- Asks for copies of personal documents
- Says you must send payment by wire service or courier
- Offers you a large payment for allowing the use of your bank account – often for depositing checks or transferring money
- Sends you an unexpectedly large check
- No legitimate employer will send payment in advance and ask the employee to send a portion of it back.
- DO NOT provide any personal information, especially social security numbers or financial information!
If the email states:
- Your mailbox is reaching its storage limit
- Password will expire in (0) days