Official University Emails
Unsure if that email you got is legit? Use this site as a source of known EIU emails for official communications.
From: VP of Student Affairs
To: All Employees, All Annuitants, All Students, Various Recipients
Subject: Email Scams
To our faculty, staff and students -
We have recently received reports of email scams sent to some members of our university community. Most recently, there has been a phishing scam involving a check for employment which requires the recipient to return a portion of the payment when the check is cashed. In order to protect our campus it is very important to understand how these scams work and what we can do to prevent ourselves from being compromised.
What is Phishing?
Phishing is an online attempt to gain sensitive information (login info, credit card details, money, etc.) by pretending to be a trustworthy entity. Criminals can use phishing, spam and other malicious email to gain access to your personal and financial information, as well as sensitive university information and access to EIU resources.
Malicious email typically:
- Uses urgent language
- Asks for personal information such as passwords, bank account numbers, user names and/or credit card numbers
- May have grammatical, typographical, or other obvious errors
Suspect Phishing?
You can report suspicious emails:
- Phishes that appear to impersonate a EIU address or service: Phishing attempts will often impersonate EIU communications. If a phish contains a EIU email address, EIU logos or branding elements, is addressed to students, faculty, and/or staff, or uses other key words targeting our EIU community, please report it. Forward the entire message tophishing@eiu.edu.
- If you receive a phish impersonating another institution or business: If you receive a phish impersonating a bank, retailer, or other institution, please consider contacting them to let them know.
- To validate all official communication at EIU please visit our website - https://www.eiu.edu/panthertech/email_verification.php. This will show all official communication at EIU and give you the option to compare it to the email in question.
Compromised?
If you gave personal information in response to a phishing email or on a suspicious webpage, your account may be compromised.
- Change your EIU password at password.eiu.edu
- Click here for documentation for resetting your password
- Call 217-581-4357 and the Help Desk can also assist you
- Carefully review any online account that became vulnerable as a result of responding to the message.
If you have additional questions or concerns please feel free to call our Help Desk.