Criminals are sending scam emails that fraudulently claim to be from the University. Criminals also send scam emails that fraudulently claim to be from banks and credit card companies, on-line retailers and other service providers such as web-mail and social networks. Some of these scam emails will falsely offer you money, unclaimed inheritance, consumer goods, unclaimed prizes and employment opportunities to lure you in.
The majority of scam emails are blocked by the University, however some emails will still get past our security systems as criminals adopt increasingly sophisticated methods of attack.
These scam emails attempt to trick you into providing important personal information such as your username, password, bank account logon details, credit card number, date of birth, and other information that may be useful to a fraudster.
Criminals want this information to:
Criminals may try to trick you into opening an attachment contained in the scam email. This attachment may contain spyware (a malicious type of computer program) that can record the web sites that you visit, record the usernames and passwords you type to log-on to those web sites, and copy the private files stored on your computer and network drive. The email attachment may contain other malicious computer programs, such as worms, that are used to attack other computers on your local network and the Internet.
The email may contain a web address that looks correct, but will take you to a fake web site. The fake web site may look identical or very similar to the web site of the organisation that the email fraudulently claims to be from.
Your personal information is valuable to criminals. The damage caused by criminals using your personal information can be very difficult to repair and may cause significant distress.
Protect yourself by remembering these simple rules:
Further advice on protecting yourself from identity theft is available from the Information Commissioner’s Office.