RE: Beware Phishing Attempt
March 18, 2019

Post

Dear Colleagues,

All of you received the following phishing attempt today:

Subject: IMPORTANT: Email Alert From Long Beach City College
From: [redacted non-LBCC address]
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2019 8:55 AM

Dear Employee:

You Have A New Email Alert from Employee Portal.

Click here [redacted] To Read

Thank You

Long Beach City College

CONFIDENTIAL NOTICE This communication is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, or otherwise protected from disclosure. Dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient, or an employee or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please destroy the original message and all copies.

Please be aware that this is a phishing attempt trying to get you to enter your email/ account credentials into a form that looks like a legitimate Outlook Web App portal.

DO NOT answer/ follow the link in this email. If you inadvertently entered your account information into the form, please email the ITS Help Desk immediately and a technician will help you rectify the issue.

This would be an excellent time to review some basic phishing-related red flags. Typically, you will find more than one of them in the same email.

  • Unknown sender addresses.
  • Unknown or unrecognizable links within the email.
  • Uncommon attachments (not a PDF, DOC, etc.).
  • Attachments that ask you to click on buttons or links to perform the action specified in the email (access documents, login, change password, etc.).
  • Threats of termination, account suspension, etc.
  • Bad spelling/grammar.
  • Although it claims to have come from Office 365, Microsoft, etc., something about the message just doesn’t look right.

How many of the above red flags do you recognize in the phishing attempt?

ITS encourages you to read more on how to recognize phishing attempts where you can also view a short video and take a quick quiz.