Phishing (pronounced 'fishing') is an email scam designed to acquire sensitive information from people. The most successful phishing emails are designed to look like the email comes from a reputable source such as a known person or entity. Magic Memories employees are often the target of attempts to gain login credentials or personal information through phishing scams that may claim to be coming from Magic Memories, Magic Memories Digital Operations, or another Magic Memories employee and/or department. Sometimes the email says that your email account is over quota so you must click a link to reactivate or update your account, or that you must provide your user information to keep your account active. These are fraudulent attempts and should not be replied to or acted upon.

Video

Microsoft on Phishing does a nice and concise job of explaining. Check it out or download the video below.

Features of Phishing

Phishing scams use an excessive or extreme sense of urgency.
Sender names can be fake (also known as spoofed); inspect the actual email address of the sender.
- Banks, FedEx, the IRS, your credit card company, and other reputable institutions will never ask for your password by email, phone, text message, or in person.
- Financial or medical institutions may communicate with you via secure messaging. You may receive an email from a financial or medical institution informing you of this message, but it will never ask for your personal information or password.
Sloppy design, misspelled words, grammatical errors, odd characters (hellö vs hello).
Attachments you weren’t expecting. Confirm unexpected attachments with the sender via another method (video chat, phone call, text, etc.)
Fake (spoofed) links. Hover your mouse over the link (without clicking it) so you can see the actual destination website address.
- Do not click on any embedded buttons in a phishing email, especially those that say "unsubscribe" or "remove me from this mailing list." These links often install malware on your system.

What to do with a suspicious email:

If you suspect a message is not a valid campus message, check Blink for information about the service. Call the individual or office that purportedly sent the email to confirm that it is a real request.

Do not forward the email to someone; especially Magic Memories technical support.
Do not follow links to a webpage.
Do not fill out any forms that ask for personal or financial information.
Do mark the message as spam within Gmail.
- Report spam icon
Do delete the email once you have marked the message as spam.