The Information Security Team at Connecticut College wishes to remind all of our users to be cautious in opening and responding to emails. Phishing, a practice involving email communication inducing individuals to reveal personal or sensitive information, has become increasingly sophisticated and deceptive. These emails can be strictly based on social engineering (manipulating the user with the message itself), or may also contain links to harmful sites with data entry forms.
We have seen many targeted phishing threats here at the college, with attackers purporting to be either a colleague, authority figure, or any other known member of the campus community. We want you to be well-equipped to identify and halt malicious e-mail communication.
A couple of quick tips to help you identify malicious activity:
- Always check the actual e-mail address that has contacted you (click the “show details” drop-down underneath the bold name of sender).
- You can use Gmail to hover over a link contained within a message. This will provide you more detailed information (including the full URL) at the bottom left of your Gmail screen.
- If the sender purports to be someone you know, always observe the tone and context of the message, looking for anomalies and other cues that they are not who they claim to be.
- If you are suspicious or hesitant to interact with a particular message or sender, please contact our Service Desk 860-439-HELP (4357)
As a reminder, the Information Services staff will never ask you for your password or any other form of sensitive personal information via e-mail.
