Protecting from Spam Emails

Spam emails can come with personal or organisational risks. By properly identifying them and taking steps to protect staff and the organisation, the risk can be greatly mitigated. For tips on identifying spam, please head to the Helpdesk article.

BEFORE PROCEEDING: If you have entered your account information anywhere that is not trustworthy, downloaded a file/attachment or engaged with a fake app update, please make an immediate phone call to Dale (even if outside work hours) for urgent password resets, at (02) 6189 1226.

I’ve failed to identify a spam email and I’ve opened a link or file, what do I do?

If you have clicked an unfamiliar or possibly malicious link, immediately close the webpage and submit an Urgent Helpdesk ticket. In the ticket, please make note of the steps that were taken (e.g., I clicked the link and opened the page, then immediately closed it).

If you have entered your account information anywhere, downloaded a file/attachment or engaged with a fake app update, please make an immediate phone call to Dale (even if outside work hours) for urgent password resets. Dale can be contacted at (02) 6189 1226.

An employee giving their credentials has been and remains the single biggest risk for customer/member data loss, business system hijacks, and ransomware lockouts. Although spam can be seen as an inconsequential time waste, treating incidents seriously is important to maintain security and safety for members and staff.

I’ve identified a spam email, but haven’t clicked or opened anything – what do I do?

If an email has been identified as spam or illegitimate email before clicking any links or files, you should delete the email by selecting the email and hitting the ‘Delete’ key on your keyboard OR mark it as ‘junk’ by dragging it to your ‘Junk Email’ folder.

Outlook also now has a Report button in the ribbon toolbar at the top, for reporting Phishing (faked sender emails trying to get information out of you) and Junk (unwanted marketing emails).

When you move things to the ‘Junk Email’ folder or use the Report feature, Outlook should learn about the sender and content to help block those unwanted or malicious emails in future.

Further information on minimising spam can be found in this Helpdesk article.