UW–⁠Madison Information Technology
Connecting & supporting our digital campus

Scam alerts

With the start of the new semester, job scams are on the rise. Scammers lure you with the promise of high pay and easy work to trick you into clicking links and sending your personal information. Learn how to recognize and report phishing.

Criminals try to scam us via email, postal mail, text, and phone. Learn how to help protect yourself by viewing alerts about scam emails.

Or, if you’ve recently received an email to your @wisc.edu account and are unsure whether it’s real or a scam, you can check it against the scam alerts subject lines table in this page.

In this page

Scam alert messages

Beware of these scams!

  • Online scam

    Scams targeting faculty

    The Office of Cybersecurity has identified hundreds of emails attempting to scam faculty. The goal of these emails is for the scammer to build trust with the victim over time for the purpose of financial gain. Learn what these scams look like and what to do if you are the victim of one.

    March 26, 2026
  • Criminal with a fishing pole stealing a folder labeled "personal data"

    2/23 Phishing alert: Subject line “Watchtower Notification: Potential Exposure Detected”

    We received reports about a  impersonation phish concerning Watchtower, a service by 1Password. The phish pretends that an item in your 1Password account has been breached and encourages you to click a fake Watchtower link for more information.

    February 23, 2026
  • Person chasing after a dollar sign-shaped phishing hook

    Beware of scams involving job offers, fake checks

    Job scams like this one are on the rise: You respond to an email job offer. Your “employer” sends you a (fraudulent) check that’s too much money, with instructions about how to send back the difference. Take these steps to protect yourself.

    September 3, 2025
  • A thief with a fishing pole catching a key

    Avoid Workday phishing scams

    Now that Workday is here, we expect to be targeted by phishing attacks. We are counting on you to help keep UW secure by detecting and reporting phishing attempts. Brush up on some reminders to help you identify red flags.

    July 9, 2025
  • Phishing scam

    Is that text message real—or is it smishing?

    “Smishing” is a version of phishing, but the message arrives via text instead of email. Find out how you can protect yourself.

    June 27, 2025
  • More Scams posts

Scam email subject lines

UW–‍Madison staff and students periodically receive malicious messages from @wisc.edu senders. This table contains a list of email Subjects associated with recent fake emails and the approximate date they were identified as scams.

If you’ve recently received an email to your @wisc.edu account and are unsure whether it’s real or a scam, you can check it against this table. If you are still unsure whether the message is legitimate, please contact the Help Desk.

Be suspicious!