Students checking their Elon University inbox this week may have found a strange e-mail waiting for them.
Starting Thursday June 10th, many current students and alumni received a spam e-mail with the subject "Deactivation of Account!!!" Elon University officials confirm that they did not send the e-mail and students should be cautious.
The e-mail asked recipients to reply to the message with information such as their username and password.
"Elon University will never ask students to reply with their personal information in an e-mail," Assistant Vice President of Technology and Chief Information Office Christopher Waters said.
Waters says spammers will hack into Gmail to try and obtain personal information from users.
In this case, recipients can tell the e-mail is spam because although the sender is labeled "Elon University," the actual address is "gmail.com," not "elon.edu."
According to Waters, the university's spam filters occasionally do not block out everything they should.
Campus Technology says that students should only provide their personal information when it is through an Elon University secured login. Students are also advised to change their e-mail password every year.