College Students Internet Safety and Security Information

No Phishing!

Phishing is usually an attempt to deceive you into thinking a legitimate organization is requesting information from you. These requests for information may look innocent at first glance or may seem to come from a legitimate source, but do not. These scams normally request you to reply to an email or follow a link to a web site and provide your login information or other personal information.

A common form of phishing would be an e-mail (such as the You Are A Target! graphic below) with a generic greeting warning of a change in an account requiring you to verify your account information. These e-mails typically include directions to reply with private information, or provide a link to a web site to verify your account by providing personal information such as name, address, bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, or other sensitive personal information.


  • For newer versions of Outlook, right click the email and select Report Phishing
  • Older versions of Outlook, complete the information on the Student Help Desk form.
  • Name and e-mail address don’t match
  • Attempt to prove legitimacy using words such as ‘Official’
  • Uses a real organization or company name but incorrect e-mail address
  • Poor grammar
  • Unsolicited requests for personal information are a clear danger signal
  • Misspellings
  • Look for the “Possible Spam:” pre-tag in the Subject line
  • The sender will threaten consequences or try to evoke fear or emotions to manipulate you into clicking the link or sending personal information back to the attacker
The short answer is NO.  There will be times when legitimate messages must be sent to inform our e-mail users of various issues. These will not include password expiration notices, inactive account removal, or cases of account abuse.
Our filtering system stops thousands of phishing attempts, spam e-mails, and virus infected messages every day, but the methods scammers use change very quickly.  Due to the variety of use for e-mail, we must also be careful not to implement filtering which may block otherwise legitimate e-mail.
  • Never send passwords, bank account numbers, or other private information in an e-mail.
  • Avoid clicking links in e-mails, especially any that are requesting private information.
  • Be wary of any unexpected e-mail attachments or links, even from people you know.
  • Look for ‘https://’ and a lock icon in the address bar before entering any private information.

Social Engineering Red Flags