The impact of phishing scams on the St. Kate’s community
By Mollie Allen
Recently, St. Kate's has faced technical issues as community members’ emails were compromised and multiple phishing attempts were made. Anyone who had clicked on the link in these phishing scams was emailed by the Technology Center. Multiple students were logged out of their accounts and had to go to the Technology Center to reset their passwords.
Two students shared their feelings after getting logged out of their accounts. “I felt horrible,” said Latiah Cargill ‘30 (Pre-Sonography, she/her). “I was very, very confused. I didn’t know what was going on,” said Kaylee Perla ‘30 (Pre-Nursing, she/her).
Both students went on to express their frustration regarding how the entire process was executed. Perla said she felt as though “the school didn’t have (her) back.” As for Cargill, she went to the Tech Center to change her password, as instructed, but “There was nobody there…I was calling numbers, getting put on hold, not getting responses. Eventually, they let me change my password, so I did get my account back.” In both interviews, the issue of a lack of assistance from the University arose, which will hopefully be addressed moving forward.
Overall, this is a reminder to stay vigilant and inspect each email that is received. There have been cybersecurity tips sent out to the SCU community by mpierret242@stkate.edu. The tips are as follows:
Make sure to check the sender. Before responding to an email, expand the sender information to view the full email address, look for misspellings, personal emails and unknown domains. Notice if the email address and organization do not match.
Be wary of links. Not every link is what it seems. Hover the cursor over a link to see which web location it will open. Again, be sure to check for misspellings.
Proceed with caution when an email asks for something. Things that a phishing scam might ask for include direct deposit information, passwords, a gift card purchase and more.
Think carefully before opening attachments and files. Make sure it is being sent by a known sender, consider whether or not the receipt of the file was expected and look out for attachments that require the enabling of passwords.
If there is any reason to believe that phishing is occurring, it should be reported to the school immediately. If an email appears to be phishing, use the phish hook icon in Gmail, or forward it to the IT Help Desk email at psc@stkate.edu.
