Smishing Scams Increasing Activity
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.This isn’t about an email. It is about Smishing Scams.
Smishing is like a phish but it comes in the form of Text Message through the SMS protocol. Some recent activity appears to be coming from a high level member of our university, but it has been identified as a scam.
The phone number the current scam is coming from is: 747-321-7936
Smishing can be harder to identify since text messages don’t have much content. Be very careful to not give any personal or university information to anyone asking in a Text Message. SMS isn’t encrypted so you should never put anything confidential in a Text Message on your phone.
Remember to use the same criteria for SMS (Text Messages) as you do for email.
- Is the requester asking you to quickly answer or making a compelling argument to quickly respond?
- Do you know for certain the requestor is who they say they are?
- Are they asking for information you would normally not be giving through SMS (remember Banks and the IRS will never ask you for information via Text)?
- Are they greeting you with a generic greeting?
If you see a suspicious SMS message, report it in your phone or simply delete it. If you would like to take a screenshot and send it to spam@uthscsa.edu, we can put it on the Phish Bowl.