Many faculty, staff, and students found phishing scams in their inbox this week. One notable example appeared to be from “University of Tennessee” with an “@vols.utk.edu” email address. In this case, recipients were asked to re-activate their account by clicking on a link.
OIT will never email you to validate, activate, or increase the quota for your account. Many universities—including UT—have been targets of spear phishing, meaning a specific and targeted campaign against our faculty, staff, and students.
You can check to see if an email you received has been reported as a scam on OIT’s System Status Center: Recent Email Scams or you can report the email with full headers to abuse@utk.edu Read the reporting instructions on the OIT website. To learn more about phishing, check out OIT’s Knowledge Base.
When in doubt, contact the OIT HelpDesk for assistance at 865-974-9900 or visit help.utk.edu.