Over the last several weeks there has been a string of phishing email scams sent to campus, including one referencing staff email accounts and Outlook. Samples of the phishing emails can be seen by clicking the following link: Phishing Samples PDF.
The Office of Technology Services (OTS) is currently rolling out Office 365 to the campus, which includes Outlook. To help avoid confusion, the Office of Information Security (OIS) in OTS would like to educate faculty, staff and students on how to recognize phishing scams.
There are specific items that suspicious emails often contain. Below are some examples:
- A sense of urgency, often accompanied by a threat of discontinuing service unless you respond.
- A long string of alphanumeric characters before the @ sign in the email address.
- A non towson.edu email address after the @ sign in the email address.
- Suspicious links within the email – these may redirect to a fraudulent site without you realizing it.
- Grammatical errors and strange wording.
- Generic greetings such as “Dear Staff or Towson University.”
- A request for personal information such as bank information, NetID or password.
For more resources on recognizing phishing or spam, visit the OIS Web page here.
OTS is communicating to the campus about the Office 365 Project through T3 articles and emails. OTS will never communicate through an external source. If you receive a suspicious email, forward it to phishing@towson.edu. See project and timeline information for the Office 365 Project here.
