Email scams play on human emotions such as curiosity, greed, or fear. Telling you of a pending email message or package is a common ploy.
Indicators of Phishing
- [UNVERIFIED] in the subject line
- Sense of urgency: “pending till proper action is taken by you”
- URLs are not umn.edu
- Slightly broken English
- Extra assurances of validity “from umn.edu trusted source,” copyright statement
What to do if you receive one of these:
- Do not reply or click the link(s).
- Forward the scam email, with headers, to [email protected].
- Report it as phishing to Google. In Gmail, click the three-dot More menu next to Reply and choose Report phishing to help educate Google's filters to block similar messages in the future.
- For more information, please see: How to Manage Spam Emails
Example:
From: IT support umn.edu <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 2:24 AM
Subject: [UNVERIFIED] ( [email protected] ) You have pending mails
To: <[email protected]>
Message is from umn.edu trusted source
You have Six{6} pending mails clustered on your cloud due to low mailbox storage capacity.
Logon to increase mailbox storage and release pending messages to your inbox following below instruction.
* MOVE MAILS TO INBOX*
<hxxps://metallomax[.]com/[email protected]> * CLEAN-UP CLOUD
<hxxps://metallomax[.]com/[email protected]>*
Mails will remain pending till proper action is taken by you.
Messages older than 10 days will be removed
Best Regards,
umn.edu Mail Admin.
____________________________________________________________________
This e-mail notification was sent to [email protected]
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