The Student Government Association (SGA) March 3 hosted a cybersecurity awareness tabling event that informed students about what to look for when identifying scam emails.
John Nelson, chairman of the SGA Policy Committee, became interested in scam emails the summer of 2024, when he saw them pop up in his inbox.
An email scam notifying him that his account was going to be shut down almost got him to respond. Luckily, he realized it was a scam before he gave up any information. To Nelson, scam emails weren’t new. What surprised him was how fast he received a scam email through his new CLC account.
“It was within a week of joining CLC,” Nelson said. “So, my email was leaked instantly.”
The incident convinced Nelson to join SGA and take on a project to inform students about the dangers of email scams. As a Senator, he reached out to the Director of Cybersecurity Byron Sosa, to learn more about what scams are affecting students and what he could do to spread awareness.
With the information passed down by Sosa, Nelson recently held a six-hour tabling event informing students how to identify these scams. He provided examples of emails that requested people to log into their student account and others offering exciting job opportunities that paid $650 a week.
“You can spot a scam email by the bold lettering,” Nelson said to a student at the tabling event. “The logo of CLC looks really pixelated and the link is usually sketchy.”
Some of the students passing by heard what Nelson said and commented on some of their own experiences.
“Oh yeah, I get one every day,” said one student.
“I just got one this morning,” said another.
As Nelson was showing one student an example of a phishing email, two students stopped at the corner of his desk. One of the students looked at the other and said to him,
“My email got hacked this morning,” the student said. “My friend said he got an email from my account, but I didn’t send it.”
The student said he changed his password but didn’t know what else to do. Nelson told him to reach out to cybersecurity and report it. He also showed him how to access the phishing alert button found on the right-sidebar of the Gmail page.
“They put their emails out there, multiple of them,” Nelson said. “Some of them seem legit, some of them don’t. I just want to show students that aren’t aware that this is a threat.”
Once a student has clicked on a link and has had their email account compromised, there is little they can do. The best way to help solve this problem is to act before students can have their information stolen. Understanding how to identify email scams and how to report them is the best way to prevent students from being scammed.
Nelson said CLC could help students be aware of this threat through an introductory email when they get their account. The email could have a couple of examples, and what they should do when they encounter one.
Nelson also said the college will be implementing a two-factor authentication method March 24 to help prevent threat actors from accessing CLC accounts. The authentication method would request that you use your phone or another email address to verify who is accessing the email, a method that’s already used with staff and faculty accounts.
