Kindly provide your available cell number

This email below has been confirmed as malicious or fraudulent by the Information Security department. If you have received this phishing email, do not open any attachments or follow the link(s) in the message; simply delete the email.

Many people received an email with this subject line, “Kindly provide your available cell number”.

The email signature was simple and had the name of one of our Deans or a Chair of a department. This phishing scam utilized our public data to gather the names of high level people in our organization. But the actual addresses the emails came from were different Gmail accounts.

Screenshot of the External Email warning.

When someone replied to this email with the cell phone number, they were called by the scammer and asked to purchase a gift card online.

This did not come from one of the Deans or Chairs, as the message in the email clearly shows it coming from a Gmail account. Always pay attention to where the email is actually coming from. If you receive something that appears to come from one person but the External Email warning shows a different address, it is always a scam of some sort.

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