UM System email scam impacts 3500 employees

ABC 17 News has confirmed with the University of Missouri that an email scam reached 3,500 faculty and staff inboxes.

The scam looks like an email from UM System President Dr. Mun Choi, urging recipients to open an attachment.

The UM System’s IT department was able to identify the scam. Employees can now just delete the email without further problems.

According to University spokesperson Christian Basi, the university provides training to faculty and staff to help identify these types of scams.

Basi also said that faculty and staff can report any other suspicious emails to abuse@missouri.edu by sending the suspicious email as an attachment to that address and to not forward the email.

Sean Spence, regional manager at the Better Business Bureau, read a copy of the scam email and said it was a “phishing scam,” meaning the scammer intended to obtain personal information, not money.

Spence said email scams are becoming more common, but there are ways to decipher the difference between a junk email and a scam.

“Look for miscapitalization, improper use of a word, improper use of an email. There are a bunch of little things that we tend to overlook sometimes in email, in American grammar, in writing; you just got to pay more attention for that sort of thing in those emails,” Spence said.