By Marc Stoufer III
On Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 9:34 a.m., an email that appeared to be from a Grand Rapids Community College student email account was sent to many other GRCC students, with the subject line “Verify your GRCC account.”
The email claimed that the recipient’s account was scheduled for deactivation and provided a link to a Google form for recovery that asked students to input their phone number, email address, GRCC student ID, date of birth and answers to both security questions.
It also asked for the email and password for BankMobile, the school’s system for “financial aid refunds, bookstore returns, RaiderCard refunds, overpayments or dropped class refunds,” according to GRCC’s website.
At 9:57 a.m., GRCC IT sent a follow-up email to all students, informing them that the email was not legitimate and was part of a phishing scam- where a seemingly innocuous email message is used to try to obtain personal information for bank accounts, emails and more.
The IT department encouraged students to report the message to Google and reminded them of the steps to respond to suspicious emails, such as verifying the sender’s address, not clicking on suspicious links, not sharing login credentials, notifying GRCC IT and reporting suspicious phishing emails and shared Google Doc to Google.
By 11:30 a.m., the form was taken down by Google, citing a violation of their Terms of Service.
It’s unclear exactly who authored the original email.
If students have information on the situation, they can contact GRCC IT Security at ITSecurity@grcc.edu or (616) 234-4357.
