Students have increasingly received emails from scammers, which often have requests to click on suspicious links. These fraudulent individuals have existed for a significant amount of time, typically trying to exploit individuals for their financial gain. Scamming is most common with money and can be very detrimental to a student’s school life.

Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC)  stated “ Schools and school districts should be aware of this immediate threat and take steps to ensure that employees are trained to recognize and report suspicious emails to the appropriate authorities through their organizational security incident reporting process. In the interim, schools and districts should reiterate their policies on the use of email to transmit personally identifiable information across their organizations and take this opportunity to remind employees in the payroll and human resources functions that they are being specifically targeted for these types of phishing attacks.”

The Director of Technology Support Services, Brett Redd, is strongly recommending that students remain aware and pay attention to important sources of emails going out. He emphasizes the significance of regularly checking emails, reviewing newsletters, and accessing information available on the official webpage.

Additionally, students are urged to monitor notifications from BC’s IT department closely. If any student suspects they may have entered their username or password in an unsafe context, it is crucial that they reset their password at once to protect their accounts. Furthermore, if there is a possibility that they have entered any financial information incorrectly or into a potentially fraudulent platform, they should contact the respective institution as soon as possible.

In such cases, students should also initiate a report with campus safety as an additional precautionary measure.Redd stated, “We have de-activated accounts that have been compromised and are working at implementing MFA early next year to keep accounts from being compromised.” If you have entered your username or password, students should reset their password as soon as possible and if they entered financial information, contact that institution at once, also start a report with safety.