Email scams are prevalent on college campuses across the country, including a recent email scam on MSU’s server. With hackers and spammers breaking into these servers, both university officials and students need to step up their security.
MSU became victim of an overpayment email scam sent to students on May 9. The email, titled “Get paid weekly as a personal assistant,” was sent to the student body asking to aid a company in processing checks and was signed under a false contact from the MSU Human Resources Affairs. Students who signed up were sent a check from the company, with an alleged worth of $3,500, and were asked to take $300 for their salary and use $200 to wire the remaining $3,000 to the next employee. But, these students found the check could not be cashed at ATMs, and that they had lost a considerable amount of money in the scam, many over $3,000.
This scam is not the first encountered at MSU recently. The MSU Federal Credit Union, or MSUFCU, faced a scam earlier this year which asked students to take a survey, part of which involved personal information, including credit card numbers, and they would be given $10. Luckily, this scam was caught early by credit union officials.
Yet the amount of phishing scams this university sees on a yearly basis calls into question the security of the email server.
If hackers have the ability to access the MSU student email server, what is to stop them from accessing our personal information kept in university files? The university has firewalls and protectors in place to protect this information, but as technology becomes more advanced and hackers become more skilled, there’s a chance they will access more than just the email server. The university must continue to put effective digital firewalls, anti-virus and anti-malware software and intrusion prevention devices in place to keep students’ and staff members’ information safe from hackers.
Although students shouldn’t have to receive these emails in the first place, most students should be sharp enough to avoid answering these types of scams or submit any personal information online to an unknown source. Anyone who has experience surfing the internet faces pop-up advertisements and scam emails daily, and students should have the knowledge of what is legitimate and secure on the internet, and what is just a phishing scam.
The university also must monitor its email server more effectively in order to combat these scams and protect their students’ information.
The most recent email scam was not discovered by university officials until over a week after it had been sent and viewed by students. If the university efficiently monitors its email server, it can help alert students of these scams quicker, therefore lessening the number of victims to online scams.
Ultimately, students should be smart enough to avoid these types of email scams and be more conservative when sharing personal information online, but the university also should become more efficient in protecting the server, thereby keeping these scams from happening and affecting students in the first place.
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