Protect Your Information from Cyber Criminals

Posted on Monday, July 27, 2020

It is important to remain vigilant to protect your personal information from cyber criminals.

Cyber criminals may attempt to obtain your personal information by sending you a fake email posing as a legitimate business or friend. This is known as phishing. 

During a phishing attack, the criminal will ask you to confirm personal information or ask you to open a malicious attachment that infects your computer with a virus or malware. 

There has been a recent uptick in scams related to the COVID-19 health threat. Cyber actors may send emails with malicious attachments or links to fraudulent websites to trick victims into revealing sensitive information or donating to fraudulent charities or causes. 

Exercise caution in handling any email with a COVID-19-related subject line, attachment or hyperlink and be wary of social media pleas, texts or calls related to COVID-19.

CFU will never ask you to provide personal information in an email. If an email appearing to be from CFU requests personal information, it is fraudulent and should be deleted.

Avoid falling victim to a phishing attempt. Watch out for emails that do the following.

• Asks you to confirm personal information - legitimate companies will not ask for your personal information in an email
• Uses a fake email address - sender is not a cfunet.net or cfu.net email address, but may use a variation such as cfu.net.servicemail
• Entices you to click - directs you to click on phony links that take you to infected web sites
• Contains spelling and grammatical errors - the verbiage may not make sense or includes glaring errors
• Includes suspicious attachments - if you aren’t expecting an attachment, don’t open it
• Elicits panic - these emails are designed to make you act quickly and include threats if you don’t follow their instruction

Cyber criminals go to great lengths to make fraudulent emails look legitimate. When in doubt, do not click any links or provide any information. Call the company at a known phone number (not one provided within the email) to verify the email’s authenticity. If you have questions about an email from CFU, call the CFU Help Desk at 319-268-5221.