Phishing Attempts

Phishing scams have become a part of our daily lives. They may subside at times, but never completely go away. Since February 2nd, we have seen a significant uptick in nefarious emails getting through to our community. My team perpetually implements rules to prohibit these messages from being delivered to our email system. However, since bad actors will always produce new variations to evade these defenses, a well-informed community is critical to email security.

The most common recent scams have been related to cryptocurrencies. There is also a pervasive scam persuading you to click a false link under the guise of faculty performance assessments. Either of these topics should currently be viewed as a red flag.

Additionally, please do not respond to any Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) request unless you are actively attempting to access one of our systems. These email messages and text messages could be a scam to access your personal information.

These are just a few examples of phishing attempts that we have seen recently. It is not enough to be apprised of the major attempts after they occur. Instead, we ask that you have a solid baseline understanding of the most popular phishing attacks and how to proceed if you have replied to one. To this end, we recently revised our phishing tutorial and we ask that you please review it using the link below:

Thank you for your continued vigilance. If you have any questions, please contact the University Technical Assistance Center at (973)-443-8822.

See also