Phishing Email Awareness
As the Spring semester begins, it is important to remain vigilant when it comes to cybersecurity awareness. As a student, you can be targeted by online criminals looking to steal your information through email correspondences. Just recently, a university was the target of a sophisticated phishing scam that caused more than 500 students to give away their credentials. The scam involved an email and a fake website that mimicked the university’s financial services page.
Phishing scams are designed to get you to respond to an email and provide personal/financial information. Many phishing attempts will look to lure you in with money or a job offer. They may seem legitimate, but they are trying to get you to respond in order to gain access to your personal information. Once they have this, they can use it to steal from you or others.
You may see a few suspicious emails this semester that claim to be from someone at UW-Whitewater, or someone offering you a job or other opportunity. Take the time to read the email closely before your respond, confirm that you know the sender, and that they are who they claim to be. If you have any doubt, you can contact the Help Desk at any time.
Here are a few ways that you can check for spam of phishing emails:
- Is the offer too good to be true?
- The message claims to be from someone at UW-Whitewater, but the email address is not coming from their UW-Whitewater account.
- Generic greetings/generic signature.
- Offering money or a job, asking for your personal info or your help.
- The message is urgent or very important and you must act immediately.
- Check the user’s email address and make sure you recognize them.
- Look for grammatical errors, many times the criminal will rush to get the message out.
- Anything suspicious at all, do not respond.
- When in doubt, please contact the Help Desk!
If you think you have responded to a phishing email, contact the Help Desk immediately: helpdesk@uww.edu or (262) 472- 4357.
If you spot a potential phish, you can also attach it and send to: suspiciousemail@uww.edu. This will help us identify phishing attacks and remove them before anyone else can respond.
For additional information on cybersecurity awareness and IT security, please visit: https://www.uww.edu/icit/services/it-security#ITSecurityTrainingInitiatives