Spam, Phishing and Scam Emails & Texts
Accessible Transcript
How to Spot a Phishing Email
A Sense of Immediacy
Phishing emails often contain a sense of immediacy, telling you that a negative action will occur unless immediate action is taken to prevent it. WTS will likely not ask you to perform any act of account authentication in order to prevent an action and will try to provide notice to any changes in your account.
Hyperlink Text
Phishing emails will often hide the URL of the site they wish you to visit by hyperlinking it with text such as "Click Here." If you are unsure about the website, make sure it has uwo.ca in the domain. Hover over the link to see the URL to ensure it's really from WTS.
Locked attachments
WTS will likely never send you a locked PDF or other file attachments which require your username and password. If you receive an email with a locked attachment, it is probably not from WTS.
Unknown Sender
Generally, phishing emails will try to trick you by assuming the identity of someone else's UWO email account and claim to be from WTS. If you don't personally recognize the name of the sender or the email comes from an outside domain, it is likely not from WTS.
Spelling/Grammatical Mistakes
While we at WTS are not perfect, we try our best to ensure that emails sent from us do not have spelling and grammar mistakes. If an email contains many spelling mistakes or reads awkwardly, it is probably not from WTS.
Ask the Expert
If you are still unsure if an email is official, it is always better to ask than assume. If you are still unsure, call the Helpdesk at 519-661-3800 to see if the email comes from WTS.
Published on and maintained in Cascade.
