New Email Approach Created to Help Protect Against Scams

[Mark Mastrean]

The campus has seen a sharp increase in the number of *Email Job Scams
*targeting
our students. These scams create serious risk of financial losses for both
the college and individual members of our community.

*Please remember: *Never share your personal information (such as cell
phone numbers and non-campus email addresses) with *any* agents who
contact you with such requests. If you know the person and are suspicious
of an email request, call them for information.

We know the scammers are using our campus directory to extract names of
students to target. In many cases they try to trick the student into
thinking it's coming from a legitimate Instructor on campus.

After consulting with selected directory users and the President's Cabinet, we
have made the following changes to help protect the safety of our campus:

1)* Students are being removed from the main public-facing campus directory*.
A separate directory has been created and put behind campus authentication,
which can be used to search for current students, alumni, emeriti, and
faculty/staff. You will find a new link on the main directory page labeled
"Search for Students." It only allows authenticated users to see and search
the directory.

2) *All EXTERNAL emails will now have [External] prepended in the subject
line. *To assist students and faculty/staff in quickly identifying messages
sent from non-campus sources (i.e., not from "@plattsburgh.edu"), we will
prepend [External] in the subject line of ANY message from an external
source.

Thank you for your vigilance against scammers and helping everyone to stay
safe. If you have questions, please email the Helpdesk at
helpdesk at plattsburgh.edu or call 564-4433.

--Library and Information Technology Services (LITS)
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