Dear user... You've got Spam!

Scam emails come in all different types with one main goal: steal your information. Emails like this one have even gone around campus and compromised the accounts of both students and faculty. These emails have evolved into very intricate plans that are cleverly disguised to hide their intentions. Due to these things, these emails are getting very hard to differentiate between real and fake. So, here are some helpful tips in attempting to catch the scammers in the act!

Are you expecting any emails? If you aren't expecting random emails (which I would assume is often) then be prepared to make a decision on whether or not to open the email or delete it immediately. Always take a second to think before you click!

Always check the sender! This email seems to be from Harding due to the logo. However, if you notice who the email is from, crismilburn@tx.rr.com, it is not a Harding email. This should bring up a red flag. Harding email only allows emails from Harding accounts through the system unless the email is approved. However, some emails can slip through the system.

Dear User... is a very generic way to start an email that clearly has a message addressed to a specific user. The dear user is followed by "You have received a new message" indicating that this sender has no idea who this is actually being sent too, yet wants you to click his link. So the sender makes this link obvious and important while making the rest of the email simplistic and unimportant.

If everything looks normal, check again! Before you click any links, always check to see what the link is first! If it doesn't look like a trusted site, don't click the link and delete the email immediately! In this case, the link the sender wanted the user to click had harding.edu in it. However, it was clearly not a real Harding website. There could even be some obvious spelling errors that could throw up some red flags!

In general, the best way to avoid these emails is thinking before clicking. Even though it may seem tedious, in the end it could save you from losing your information to people who could do some costly things with that information!

For fun, here is a video about a man who replies to these scam emails. He also points out some good tips in noticing these scams. If you would like to see more of his scam reply stories, search Scamalot on YouTube.