Over the last few weeks, phishing attempts have increased significantly against SMU e-mail addresses. This is a trend that is being seen at universities around the world, and OIT has been working on solutions to try and prevent accounts from being compromised. Starting this week, there will now be one more way that phishing attempts may be thwarted.
Our spam filter – which already prevents millions of spam messages from arriving in your inbox daily – will now attempt to detect a wider range of suspicious links that may direct you to a phishing site. If one of these links is detected and then clicked, the spam system will direct you to a warning page. It will display the URL, and give you the option to report the link as malicious, or if it is a trusted site you will have the option to proceed to the link’s destination. Of course, only click “I trust this site” if it is actually from a trusted source!
As always, you can contact the IT Help Desk at 214-768-4357 or help@smu.edu if you are unsure about any e-mail you have received. We must all remain vigilant against these attacks on our e-mail accounts to protect the data of the University. Security always starts with YOU!
