Over the last ten days there has been a rash of spoofed emails sent to various staff that at first glance appeared to come from a building administrator. Between the message’s sense of urgency and how close the sender’s purported address was to the admin’s actual address, more than a dozen staffers were lulled into replying.
This is a reminder to look closely at an email or text, especially if it is asking for personal information like your cell phone or asking you to purchase something.
If anything about the address or reply info looks “off” just ignore the email or click the More menu and click report spam or phishing. In all cases, don’t reply back to such an email –— INSTEAD contact the colleague you believe contacted you via a KNOWN working method such as their district email address or phone number.
We all need to stay vigilant and keep our guard up, because unfortunately the scammers are out there and are trying to catch us with our defenses down.
Fell for their plea?
- If you provide your cell phone number, block any inbound number(s) they use should they reach out to you via cell call/text asking for help.
- If you purchased a gift card and shared it with the spoofer (one of the typical asks), check out this blog post for steps to take in the aftermath of being scammed including reporting the matter to both local law enforcement and the gift card issuer (links are on the page).
- Let the tech department know via service ticket so we can put a block on the offending sending email address
