Phish Bowl/Phishing Scams

The UCLA Information Security Office advises faculty, staff, and students to be vigilant when opening emails from unknown, suspicious, or unexpected senders. Some of these messages can contain malicious content in the form of infected file attachments or attempts to steal personal information through carefully-crafted social engineering campaigns.

These emails, collectively called "phishing emails," or "phishing scams," are designed to trick campus users into providing their passwords and other identifying information to attackers.  They can also be designed to extort money or trick users into navigating to fake login pages, which can sometimes mimic the look of well-known logon screens, like the UCLA Logon page.

How to Report a Phishing Scam

The UCLA Information Security Office requests that campus users report phishing messages to our team so that we can proactively alert campus users and bring awareness to widespread phishing campaigns. In order for the Information Security Office to take action in response to a reported phishing message, please follow these steps:

1. Provide a full copy of the email by "saving" the email within your email client.
   • For Microsoft Outlook users, this can be accomplished by hitting File > Save As after opening the email.
2. Compose a new email with the previously-saved phishing message added as an attachment.
3. Send the resulting message and attachment to security@ucla.edu with a subject line identifying the message as a phishing report.

It is important to be aware of fraudulent phishing schemes. Check back here for known phishing attacks.