Phish Alert - Be aware of phishing and fraud scams

GCSU Information Security wants you to know that we are under a constant state of attack from hackers. We have seen a high number of phishing emails come in recently and we wanted to make you aware of a scheme that seems to catch people by surprise.

The latest trend is to create a form in Google Docs that asks you to provide your username and password. Often the sender purports to be either someone in IT or is pretending to be Cathy Cox.  The subject line will be something similar to “[Ext GC] Cathy Cox has shared a document with you.”  

In every case where you receive an email that you aren’t expecting, please use the tool that the university has purchased to help you determine whether it’s legitimate; Phish Alert.  It’s found in every version of Outlook; it’s the white envelope with the orange fish hook through it.  Routing emails through Phish Alert helps you identify illegitimate emails and it informs us in Information Security that we have an issue so that we can address the issue promptly.

Please be very wary of clicking URLs or opening attachments when the email is branded as external with a warning. Unless you were expecting something specific from a vendor, don’t open those. Hackers use real-world scenarios to trick you into providing your information. We receive these scams on campus every day.