With an increasing number of email scams landing in the inboxes of UW-Madison students and staff, DoIT has been working hard to protect everyone’s information. Starting this year, all faculty, including student staff, are required to complete cybersecurity training.
To help you keep vigilant we’ve included some common scams that have hit UW inboxes:
Personal Assistant jobs offering $400-600 a week for only 10 hours per week. We all can see this is obviously a scam. After all, no one actually believes their assistant deserves more than minimum wage! 7.25 an hour for sporadic and inconsistent work is much more realistic.
Outlook/Microsoft Account Deactivation threats. These are fake as well. Sometimes they’ll tell you that your account is somehow inactive despite you using it every day. Or they’re deleting your second account you never knew about. The university pays way too much for you to get a second account, much less deactivate it on a whim.
Replying to emails offering free stuff like pianos, tickets, or illicit drugs is a sure way to get your account hacked. College students are way too broke to be giving out all that free stuff to strangers.
When you see someone fall for one of these scams, just remember they are the reason why we have to use DUO every time we log in!