Today we received multiple reports of email messages claiming to be from Vassar personnel.\u00a0 All of these messages came from gmail.com, not from vassar.edu.\u00a0 The messages ask the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor, or ask if someone is \u201cavailable\u201d.<\/p>\n
If you receive one of these messages, please email it to\u00a0catchoftheday@vassar.edu<\/a>\u00a0and then delete it.\u00a0 If you engage the sender, it will lead to a fraudulent financial transaction.\u00a0 The emails are from a criminal who is trying to steal money by impersonating Vassar employees and targeting people within an individual’s department or organization.\u00a0 The criminal tries to convince the recipients to purchase one or more gift cards and send back the redemption codes.\u00a0 This is a common scam based on existing trust relationships among employees.\u00a0\u00a0Remember to always double-check the \u201cfrom\u201d and \u201creply-to\u201d addresses in email to verify the sender.\u00a0 <\/em>It is a good practice to contact the purported sender through a known phone number, or create a new email sent to the person’s vassar.edu email address, to ask if the original request was authentic.<\/p>\n The reports today were for five separate instances of impersonation, targeting five different department heads.\u00a0 All of the incoming email addresses were blocked as soon as they were brought to our attention, in order to prevent additional communication from the criminal.<\/p>\n Thank you for your attention and thank you as always for your timely reporting!\u00a0 The diligence from our community members keeps all of us at Vassar College more safe and secure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today we received multiple reports of email messages claiming to be from Vassar personnel.\u00a0 All of these messages came from gmail.com, not from vassar.edu.\u00a0 The messages ask the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor, or ask if someone is \u201cavailable\u201d. If you receive one of these messages, please email it to\u00a0catchoftheday@vassar.edu\u00a0and then delete … Continue reading Suspicious emails impersonating Vassar personnel<\/span>