If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Or at least when it comes to phishing, an online scam that involves the use of emails appearing to be from a trusted source. These scams range anywhere from job offers that are a little too convenient to a free iPad, and students can be easy targets for these scammers.
“There’s a variety of different things when coupled together that could lead to the possibility of an email I don’t want to mess with,” MSU Human Resources analyst Chuck Folinosaid.
Some of the basic things that can tip students off to a scam email includes links with unknown URL’s, emails that ask for personal information such as social security numbers or credit card numbers and unrecognized email addresses, Folino said.
Folino said often times, the emails can look very authentic, making it harder for students to realize it’s a scam.
“The easier it makes the recipient to respond and click a link, the more enticing (it is),” he said. “Some are better than others at expressing authenticity.”
MSU Police Detective Sgt. Valerie O’Brien said the phishing she generally sees on campus tends to be unsolicited emails. She said if students receive an email they don’t recognize, to delete the email rather than responding to it. Opening it can let whoever sent the email that it’s a live email address and they will continue to send spam, O’Brien said.
“We just had one that came to one of our officers and it looked like it was a bank transaction,” O’Brien said. “If he had opened it, it would have installed Malware.”
O’Brien said another common scam students receive are job offers. Students will sometimes fill out the job application and end up falling victim, sometimes even ending up responsible for repaying money.
“If you get an email asking you to fill out a form, that’s normally an indicator that they want personal information to steal,” she said. “Say it’s from the bank and you fill out the information, they could potentially have access to your bank account.”
“Most businesses and corporations would tell you they would never ask for your personal information,” she continued.
O’Brien said many scams she has investigated involved the scammers living in other countries — the last three traced back to a physical address in Nigeria. In these incidents, sometimes it’s necessary to reach out for federal assistance.
“If it rose to such a significance, that’s where (we) would get into a partnership with the FBI,” O’Brien said. “A lot of times, what we find is that people lose their money and we can’t track it down because it’s in another country.”
To report phishing attacks at MSU, students and faculty can report the message by forwarding the email to postmaster@msu.edu, or call the help desk, MSU IT Services Communications Manager Beth Bonsall said.
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