How to Handle Phishing or Spam Emails

Owned by
Sandro Munoz
, created
Last updated: Feb 10, 2023
2 min read

Whenever you think an email might be a phishing attempt, there are a few things you should do:

  1. Check to see if the sender is from UC Davis. If so, follow-up directly with him or her to verify the email is legitimate.

  2. If the sender did not send the email, or if the sender is not from UC Davis, check UC Davis’s Phish Bowl site to see if this is a known phishing attempt or to report one. Reporting phishing attempts helps us block future ones from reaching you.

  3. Whether you choose to report the message as a phishing attempt or not, you can always delete it.

Mail sent from outside of UC Davis is now marked as External in Outlook, as shown below. This is an extra indicator that this message should be thoroughly scrutinized before clicking any links or opening any attachments. This does NOT confirm a message is a phishing attempt, only that you should pay closer attention to it.

 

You should not forward potentially phishy messages to the Service Desk for verification. Verification should be done through the Phish Bowl site mentioned above.

 

Here are some tips for spotting and protecting yourself from phishing attempts.

How Can I Tell If an Email Is Phishing?

See: https://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=8380

What is Phishing?

See: https://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=0220

How Do I Stay Safe from Phishing Attacks?

See: https://kb.ucdavis.edu/?id=2881

How do I Identify and Avoid Student Job Scams?

See:

What about Spam?

Spam is different than phishing. Spam is unsolicited commercial email, which usually tries to sell you something you’re not interested in.

Microsoft Outlook has built-in tools to help reduce the amount of spam you receive. In the example below, you can see that when you right-click on an email and click Junk > you have various options.

The Junk E-mail Options allow you to customize how junk email is handled automatically.