There are two phishing emails that are making the rounds through the Mount Royal community.  The first is a notification that we are migrating to Staff Outlook 2018.

 

 

Of course, no such thing is happening. The second appears to be from payroll:

 

 

The majority of you will look at the addressing information for both of these emails and immediately recognize they are fake.  However, there is a small number of you who neglect to check the addressing information of an email before you decide to click.  Out of that group, there is an even smaller number of you who process emails when you are distracted and will quickly scan the email,  fail to notice the grammatical errors but pick up on its urgency and click in a panic.  It is that small group that I am hoping will read this article and realize:

1. Checking the email address of the email sender will save you time. If the email address is wrong, you don’t even have to read the email you can just forward it to abuse@mtroyal.ca or delete it.
2. If you have an emotional reaction to an email, there is a good chance you are being baited to click on something you shouldn’t. Stop what you are doing and take a closer look a the email.
3. It takes a lot more of your  time to have your machine re imaged than it does to slow down and look carefully at emails with links or attachments.

All it takes is one click  and a whole day is lost re imaging your machine, apologizing to colleagues, apologizing to students and feeling like an idiot. All it takes is one click and the whole network can be shut down.  Join the rest of us who slow down, check the sender’s email address  and giggle “Nice try”.