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Phishing Alert-Subjects: “Are you available? This is urgent,” “Are you on campus” or “Hello”

Don’t fall for it! The Office of Information Security (OIS) in the Office of Technology Services (OTS) warns about a current phishing scam targeting faculty, staff and students.

About the scam
This email scam falsely claims to be from a higher ranking faculty or staff member, and could have a subject line of “Are you Available? This is urgent,” “Are you on campus?” or “Hello.” The sender discourages calling, claiming to be busy, and could also be asking to make an unusual purchase (like a gift card) or for confidential data. See a PDF example of this type of phishing scam.

What to do if you’ve received this type of scam
If you receive this or a similar suspicious email in your TU account:

• Do not reply through email or complete the request.
• Question the request. Ask yourself if this normal.
• Confirm the sender with a phone call. If TU faculty or staff asks for any sensitive information, or for you to make a purchase, look up their phone number in the TU Directory and call to confirm they made the request.
• Report the phish. If using an @student.towson.edu email account or from a mobile device, forward it to phishing@towson.edu. If using Outlook on a desktop/laptop click the “Report Phish” button at the top of the email. Both options send the email to the Office of Information Security for review.

 For more resources on how to recognize phishing, visit www.towson.edu/phishing.

Categorised in: General

This post was written by Weldon, Jennifer