Phishing Attempt Purporting to Originate from Adobe Acrobat Cloud/Adobe Acrobat DC

Please be advised of the following phishing attempt purporting to be from an NYU faculty member, sent via Adobe Acrobat Cloud/Adobe Acrobat DC:

Screenshot of a message coming from "Adobe Acrobat cloud DC" saying "Read this message from a Tablet or Mobile Device or Desktop or Laptop Click here from your device for instructions unique to your device."

Please be reminded that even if you receive a message from someone that you know, and even if that message appears to be secure, because it looks as if it may have been sent via a secure portal, and a lock symbol is displays within the body of the message, you should scan for the following:

  • E-mail from a trusted and secure source will have https:// (vs. http://) and green lock symbol displaying in the browser’s address bar as follows:

Screenshot showing a locked green padlock followed by "https://"

However, treat any e-mail as suspicious which has a strike mark thru https and the lock symbol in the browser address bar as follows:

Screenshot showing a locked padlock with a red "x" on it followed by "https://" with a red strike mark through the "https".

  • Please also be aware that if you click the green lock symbol to the left of “https://” you will see information concerning the owner of the lock or the certificate, as follows:

Screenshot showing an example of the text that displays when a user clicks the green lock symbol.  In the displayed instance the text that displays is "home.nyu.edu" followed by "Secure Conenction"

  • Review the internet domain name to ensure that that it is correct, e.g., in the URL displaying above, nyu.edu is the correct domain name of the site (vs. nyu-edu.edu or nyuedu.edu or some other variant).
  • Please also be reminded that if you have questions about the legitimacy of an e-mail message you’ve received, do not reply to the message or click on any embedded links or open any attachments. Instead, independently verify the message content/attachments with the sender.
  • The following  are two GIFs which show how to quickly and effectively evaluate a site’s legitimacy:
    Firefox (v45.1.1) https://gfycat.com/CooperativeYearlyCopepod
    Chrome (v51.0.27) https://gfycat.com/RespectfulReadyBlackfootedferret