Email Phishing scam calling on San Jose State University students
Photo by: Lolodrake
An email phishing scam is calling on the students of San Jose State University (SJSU) and is trying to con them into revealing the access codes of their student email accounts. The scam email makes students lower their guard by pretending to be from the University’s Students Help Desk.
Students are used to receiving messages from the Help Desk informing them about classes, security alerts, and surveys. The scam emails are presented in such a way that it is easy to take them to be regular messages from the university’s help center.
The scam gives various ruses to students for eliciting their mail account passwords:
- One says their inboxes have presently become overgrown. The University will have to delete all such accounts to make space for new ones, it warns.
- Another says the help desk is deleting old or unused email accounts to free up space in the server.
- A third says the University is upgrading its server and is now able to offer more features and enhancements to interested students.
The different scam emails urge students to take the same action. They are asked to click at a link inside the email and submit their email login codes at the site that is opened. To hassle the students further, the scam email says they have seven days to do this, failing which their accounts will face disastrous consequences.
The scam is really after the access codes for email accounts of the students which would enable the scammers to get access to various sensitive financial data like their social security number, credit or debit card account numbers and bank account number.
The University has asked students to beware of the scam and not give away any personal information to the scam. It has released six samples of the scam emails that have till now been used by the scammers.
Source: TheSpartanDaily.com
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