The SIU-Carbondale Office of Information Technology is putting out an urgent notice to the campus community about an email scam.
Interim Chief Information Officer Scott Bridges says students, faculty and staff at SIU-C are receiving emails telling them their financial aid award letter is available by clicking on Saluki Net or their SIU email account.
Bridges says this is particularly troublesome since the scammers have timed this to go along with the university's normal financial aid processing cycle.
"The letter, the phish itself, in the email looks very authentic, looks very real and students in particular would more easily fall prey to this particular phish because the timing is in conjunction with what they would expect from the financial aid office."
Bridges says scammers can gather a lot of damaging information.
"Once they have an ID and a password, many students, and faculty and staff, if I'm to be honest, will use the same password for their campus access as they do for their banks, for purchasing items across the internet, potentially for credit cards."
Bridges says SIU-C tries to alert the campus community about scams through the university's news service, social media, and email, if the threat is at a heightened level. But, he says that's difficult to do in an email scam, because the hackers receive the same email warning about the threat, allowing them to change their tactics.
Bridges says the financial aid scam is happening at higher education institutions across the country.
