Reporting a Spam, Phishing, or Malicious Email

Spam emails, also known as junk emails, are unsolicited emails that are mass sent out to an large, indiscriminate mailing list. Some spam is sent by legitimate sources for the purposes of marketing, but there is also malicious spam that is meant to trick its recipients into buying a product or giving out sensitive information by posing as someone or something they are not. If you are unsure about whether an email you received is harmful spam, you can report it to Help Desk Central, who will verify its legitimacy. This article covers the proper steps for reporting a potentially harmful email to HDC.

How to Report Spam to HDC

HDC can only verify the legitimacy of spam emails that are related to on-campus issues. Before reporting an email to HDC, you will need to ensure the email meets one of the following criteria:

1. The email is coming from a compromised TAMU account, spoofed TAMU address, or is attempting to sign as a domain that appears to be TAMU related (i.e. admin@helpadmintamu.com or similar).
2. The emails are being sent campus-wide and there is no way to opt out of the email mailing list.
3. It cannot be determined whether the email is legitimate or fake.

If the email does meet one of the listed criteria, then the email will need to be sent to HDC as an attached file. Sending the email as an attachment gives our IT security team the email's data, which will help them determine if the message is legitimate or not. See Sending Email as an Attachment for information on how to send an email as an attachment. 

If the emails are blatantly spam and are coming from a legitimate email domain (such as @gmail.com, @outlook.com, or @hotmail.com), these should not be sent to HDC. Instead, we advise that you simply block the sender and delete the email. 

Tips to know if an email is official (from Technology Services):

1. We use your name. 
   2. We include the last 4 numbers of your UIN. 
   3. We never send you a hidden 'Click Here' sort of link. 
   4. We will never ask you to disclose your password to us...EVER. 
   5. We ENCOURAGE you to contact HDC if you have any suspicions. 

Additionally:

1. Help Desk emails come from helpdesk@tamu.edu
2. Spam or phishing emails tend to try and instill a sense of fear or urgency (i.e. "your account will be deleted if you don't click this link right now!").
3. Legitimate signature blocks may be pasted by an attacker at the bottom of an email to further try and trick the recipient into believing the email is legitimate.
4. If someone on the other end of the email is impersonating someone else, they will typically refuse to be contacted any other way other than email (i.e. emails asking if someone is available to send them gift cards because they are in a meeting and cannot talk on the phone).
5. If you click on any link inside of an email that has been verified as a phishing email, you should change your password immediately.