Phishing Information

As with all email domains, FDU.EDU receives a myriad of phishing attempts and many of them are quite similar in nature. The most common variant is the “gift card scam” in which a scammer claims to be an FDU employee and asks you to purchase gift cards on their behalf. Although these messages claim to be from FDU employees, they generally come from Gmail accounts and as such are prepended with the [External] tag.  They usually begin with an innocuous introductory question like “Are you Free?” and many contain a subject line of “[External] Are you available?”.  Although our domain has received some fairly convincing scams over the years,  this scam usually contains enough red flags to be detectable by a majority of people.  

If you get a phishing email, please click ‘Report Message’ in Outlook.  This is the most effective way to make both USAN and Microsoft aware of a phishing attempt.  Email sent directly to members of USAN, while appreciated, is less effective than simply using the reporting tool.

Our organization is constantly adjusting email rules to stop as many attempts as possible while not restricting legitimate external emails from being delivered. Some phishing emails will always make it through the system and we are counting on the vigilance of an educated and aware community to act as our final line of defense. Please take an extra second to consider all of the common hallmarks of a phishing attempt that we have highlighted in our Tech Alerts over the years.  

For more information on reporting a phishing scam, please visit: 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

See also