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Updated: Thursday, September 5 2013, 10:52 PM CDT
University of Texas Police are warning the public about a phishing scam targeting campus emails.
51,00 students and 24,000 employees could be at risk.
Officer Layne Brewster tells us several employees are reportedly victims. She says what they thought was an email from a university department, turned out to be someone on the other end wanting personal information.
“It’s usually name, date of birth, social security number, banking account number,” said Brewster.
She wants everyone to be reminded that the University would never ask for that via email.
“Don’t give any sensitive information out that cannot be trusted,” Brewster said.
Rachael Weison is a teaching assistant at UT who gets dozens of emails a day.
“It’s kind of overwhelming the massive amount I get. The one’s I normally pay attention to are the ones are the ones from work,” Weison said.
She says she found a way to keep her emails out of scammer’s hands.
“I’ve encrypted all of them so they can’t give it out as well. Ideally that’s enough so no one will be sending me emails or sending me spam from those,” said Weison.
With more potential people at risk, UT wants you to think twice when it comes to an email that just doesn’t look right.
“If anything looks suspicious we are telling people do not click on any link,” Brewster said.
If there is uncertainty whether or not the information is legitimate, call the appropriate department within the University to verify or contact the ITS department at http://www.utexas.edu/its/Phishing Scam Targeting UT Campus Emails