Please be advised of the following recent examples of phishing emails purporting to come from an NYU community member via Google Docs file sharing:
With respect to the examples above:
- despite purporting to come from an NYU community member via NYU Google Docs file sharing, note that the from address “itservice048@gmail.com” indicates that the file share is not being delivered from an NYU email address.
- the banner along the bottom of the messages states that the message is coming from outside of our organization.
- another phishing indicator is the grammatical error “[name] as shared a file with you”, in the middle of the image.
- please be reminded that when receiving file share via NYU Google Apps, the sharing individual’s NYU email address will appear in the top left hand corner of the file share message.
Recommendations:
- Do not open file shares that you are not expecting until you confirm the legitimacy with the sender via an independent means of communication.
- Even when expecting a file share, examine all such email notifications you receive before clicking the link to open. Remember, that scammers may use familiar names/elements within these messages to trick you.
- The consequences of clicking a malicious link are credential compromise, and/or the possible installation of malware, such as spyware, ransomware, adware or cryptocurrency mining code.
- Confirm the link destination before clicking by previewing URLs. For more information, please see the following KnowledgeBase article – Security Education: Previewing URLs.