TechTalk_4th

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PHISHING EMAIL
DEMONSTRATIONS
Jacob Hill, User Services
As a little fish in a big pond, chances are you
were emailed one or more phishing messages
weekly. Hopefully, our security software blocked
these malicious emails. If not, hopefully you
recognized that the message wasn’t valid and
you pressed your delete key.
Unfortunately, these phishing messages are
often written very cleverly. As a result, this is
and will continue to be a prominent issue for
all college campuses, as well as for personal
email accounts. In an effort to combat their
malicious intent, the Department of Information
Technology held a phishing email demonstration
during the fall 2016 semester. The goal of
this demonstration was to educate and alert
students, faculty, and staff the dangers and red
flags of scam-based emails.
Phishing demonstrations were held for a total
of six sessions, two in the UC Commons and
four in front of Towers Café. Using an enlarged
and posted email, Ms. Alexis Whitworth and
Mr. Jacob Hill, Information Technology student
workers, asked participants to identify parts
of the message that questioned legitimacy. In
total, 109 students partook in this quest and
were entered in a raffle, but many others gained
valuable knowledge as they watched others
participate in the demonstration.
Event comments were quite favorable. Students,
faculty, and staff found the demonstration very
useful and informative, saying that they “were
now aware of what to look for in a phishing
email” and that “there are red flags I never
would have thought to look at”. Business cards,
informational pamphlets and general technology
knowledge was shared as well, much to the
appreciation of participants.
Plans are underway for future phishing
demonstrations and expansion of our efforts.
While traffic in Towers Café was strong, it was
decided that the ground floor of Towers Complex
might receive significantly more foot traffic
and would be a hot spot for a large amount of
students. In addition, Information Technology
is in the process of increasing the number of
webpages that cover phishing information.
This information will be launched soon at
Please
check with us frequently as we expand upon on
scam and phishing email information, complete
with a phishing example, method to report
phishing messages received, and ability to
compare an email received on our campus with
those that have been reported.
Falling for a Phishing scam can result in not only
an inconvenience, but also financial damages.
Read
) more about a university whose
employee paychecks were redirected to accounts
in Africa after complying with a phishing email
directive.
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