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Serving the UMN community since 1900

The Minnesota Daily

Serving the UMN community since 1900

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Phishing scam disguised as Google Docs hits UMN email accounts

The issue was resolved as of Friday afternoon, according to the University.

An email virus disguised as a Google Document hit campus emails Wednesday afternoon.

The phishing scam impacted Google email accounts across the country, including those at the University of Minnesota.

“We are investigating a phishing email that appears as Google Docs. We encourage you to not click through, [and] report as phishing within Gmail,” Google wrote on Twitter.

The issue was resolved at 2:30 p.m., Bernard Gulacheck, University interim vice president and chief information officer of information technology said in a campus-wide email Wednesday evening.

The email was sent to all contacts in affected email accounts if a user clicked its link. Since all University email accounts are on one server, the virus was shared with many school email accounts.

In the email, students were urged to not click on the link. Staff are working to prevent this message from spreading, the statement said.

Emails on University accounts experienced delays in sending due to the virus, according to the email.

On Twitter, One Stop Student Services warned students the school doesn’t ask for social security or bank account information over email.

In a statement Wednesday, Google announced steps that had been taken to counter the hack.

“We have taken action to protect users against an email impersonating Google Docs, and have disabled offending accounts,” the statement read. “We’ve removed the fake pages, pushed updates through Safe Browsing, and our abuse team is working to prevent this kind of spoofing from happening again. We encourage users to report phishing emails in Gmail.”

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