Fontbonne Targeted With Phishing Attacks

Tallulah Henderson ‘29

At the end of September, Fontbonne students and faculty received an email inviting them to an event through a link. But the emails were scams. Anyone who clicked on the invitation link and entered their information got hacked. 

 The hacker then sent the same hack to the entire email list of the originally hacked person, in hopes that someone else would do the same thing and repeat the process.

Fontbonne’s Tech Support told us that the hacker’s goal is to phish you, or pose asa known email, with the aim that you would recognize the email and open it since it appears to be someone you know. When you open the illicit email, the hacker tries to steal sensitive information to gain access to your bank account, social security number, etc.

 Many Fontbonne students and faculty members ended up getting hacked through the emails, including Mr. Loftus and sophomore Adrianna Contino.

Mr. Loftus said, “I opened the email during a busy work day from a reputable source I thought,” when asked what made him open the email.

When talking to Adrianna, she told us that the hacker was able to get into all of her Google accounts and sign her out of them, restricting her access to these accounts.

To prevent yourself from getting hacked, first, verify the email address from the sender. Double check the email address because many times the email address will be close to the known email address – it will not be exactly the same. Finally, report the sketchy email to an administrator and mark the email as spam and delete them.

If you have already opened the email, run a check on the device to look for any apps secretly running unnoticed.