College students and university employees are being warned to keep an eye out for phishing scams and other bogus e-mails. Fraudsters often target academic institutions during the fall with online scams and bogus e-mails to try to trick people into giving up personal information.
Eastern Michigan University's Chief Information Officer, Carl Powell explains that academic institutions across the country face this problem every year.
Powell adds, phishing e-mails can often be identified by questionable links they include and the urgent tone they use to try to scare people into responding.
A press release from the University suggests the following:
A forged link: Even if a link has a name you recognize, it may not link to the real organization. You can hover your mouse over the link to see if it matches what appears in the email. If it looks different, do not click the link.
Requests Personal Information: If you get an email requesting your personal information, including your username or password, it is probably a phishing attempt.
Sense of Urgency: Internet criminals want your information now, so they try to make you think something happened that requires you to act promptly. The most common scam EMU students see usually instructs them to log in to some site because their email is “over quota” or needs to be registered to avoid closure.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is: Unsolicited employment opportunities and offers of free or heavily discounted items via email are also techniques used in phishing attempts. A common scheme is to “hire” unsuspecting students to work from home and then ask them to make bank deposits (using a fraudulent check) and withdrawals that then entangles the victim in a bank fraud scheme. Making something sound too good to pass up is a tactic scammers commonly use to bypass the rational judgment of potential victims.
If you receive a phishing email, you should simply delete it.
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— Taylor Pinson is the WEMU News assignment reporter, and producer for 89.1 WEMU News. Contact him at 734.487.3363 or email him studio@wemu.org
