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Phishing Email Example: E-mail Security Notice

January 30, 2014

The biggest clue that this is a phishing attempt is the most obvious: it is asking you to click on a link in an email message.   It is also telling that it says your email account has been suspended, but in fact you just received this message by email, most likely with a lot of other messages, so that part is clearly untrue.  There is also nothing that tells you who or what organization in Stanford actually sent it; it just says "Stanford University".   Finally, if your email program allows  you to see the URL behind the link without clicking on it, you would see that the "Click here" link goes not to a stanford.edu host but to one in ".kz", which turns out to be Kazakhstan.   They are unlikely to be involved in the security of Stanford email, except perhaps to try and reduce it.

signature.gif (156×30) saying "Stanford University"

Your e-mail access has been suspended for your security.

To regain your access Click here

Stanford University.

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