Northwest warns against bogus emails
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Northwest Missouri State University web administrators sent an email to students and staff on Monday warning the campus community to be on the lookout for, well, suspicious emails.
Headlined “a reminder regarding suspicious emails,” the message read: “Northwest employees and students recently have reported receiving fraudulent emails prompting this reminder that Northwest will never request your username and password via email.”
The warning then offered a list of precautions and “do-nots” that included reminders never to click on a link within a suspicious email; never to share passwords or personal/financial information through email; never to trust offers that seem too good to be true; and to always be suspicious of any email containing an urgent request for personal information.
Those receiving suspect messages were urged to call the university’s computer help desk.
The warning also contained an example of the sort of fraudulent email students and others have reportedly been receiving.
The example read: “This is to notify all Northwest Missouri State University staffs that we are currently carrying out scheduled maintenance and upgrade of our web email service again. To complete your Account Verification process, you are advised to reply to this message with the information listed below to enable the upgrade of your account and also to prevent your Web email Account from being Deactivated.”
The example also included a request of the type often employed by scammers asking recipients to supply their full name, webmail user ID, and webmail password.
