As you settle into new classes and new routines, it’s important to take a moment to learn how to protect yourself online and how to recognize phishing attempts. 

Every day, new phishing, smishing, pop-ups and other scams arise to lure us into revealing personal information, clicking malicious links, or downloading harmful software. How can anyone keep up with these deceptive tactics and stay safe online?

• Take the Cybersecurity Awareness Training. This optional training teaches you how to stay safe online. It’s designed to help you:
  • identify online scams
  • learn the importance of keeping your operating system (OS) up to date
  • recognize fake websites
  • know where to find Cybersecurity guides and other resources that show you in detail how to be more cyber secure

This training is free and can be taken at any time. Squeeze it in now or during a long weekend. But, most importantly, please take it.

• Learn what a phishing scam is and how one might look in your inbox. Even if an email request looks genuine, be skeptical.

How to report a phishing attempt?

Outlook users:

To report phishing emails received via Outlook, click the “Report Suspicious” button on the toolbar/ribbon located at the top of your page. This action will send the questionable email to our security team for review.

Non-Outlook users:

If you are using any non-Microsoft email client (eg, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Android/iOS native mail, etc), you will not see the “Report Suspicious” action button. However, it is still possible to report the message as spam/phishing by forwarding it to report-spam@doit.wisc.edu.

What else?

For additional information on how to avoid phishing, smishing or other forms of scams, check out the following articles:

• How to recognize and report phishing
• Beware the phish
• MFA me, ASAP
• Is that text message real—or is it smishing?
• AI-powered scams: How to protect yourself in the age of artificial intelligence