Did You Get The Bait?
Whether a student, employee, or professor, everyone is at risk of phishing attacks. If you have ever been phished, your personal information now belongs to someone that might blackmail you, steal your identity, and divert your money.
What is Phishing?
Have you ever gotten an email with the subject “OPEN VERY IMPORTANT!!" “CONGRATULATIONS"? If yes, then you have been sent an email from someone who most probably has done his/her homework about you and knows how to lure you into giving them your personal information.
Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails pretending to be from trustworthy companies, whether from a bank or college, in order to activate individuals to uncover personal information; such as a student's AUBsis password or her credit card numbers.
Tips for you
Beware of emails that have titles that urge you to take action such as “Congratulations you have won" or “Open very important;" emails that have spelling mistakes or address you in generic terms such as “Dear valued student" or “Dear Sir/Madam."
Do not click on any link in suspicious messages. Legitimate organizations will never ask you for personal information such as your username, password, or credit card related information. An email with the subject “Facebook Account" or “Corona Virus Pandemic Updates" might look very official. However, the content of the email has a link asking you to log in to your Facebook account or other social media accounts using your password. If you do, you are giving access to the phisher to your account (s).
Check out the email sender before replying or taking any action no matter how the email looks credible. All emails from AUB should end with @aub.edu.lb or @mail.aub.edu
Protect your username and password. Use a hard to guess password that is not randomly chosen from a dictionary.
Install an antivirus program on your computer and keep it updated.
Report immediately to IT helpdesk if you suspect you have been a phishing victim at it.helpdesk@aub.edu.lb
Forward as an attachment to the suspected email without clicking on any links or making any downloads to spam@aub.edu.lb so it can be blocked from reaching others.
Delete the fraudulent email from your inbox once you have reported it.