The UAB Department of Surgery has noticed an uptick in spam and phishing emails that faculty, staff, and trainees are receiving.

With the increase in targeting, the department would like to remind all employees to take a moment to read each email carefully before responding or clicking any links, even if the email appears to be legitimate or from a colleague or leader.

Individuals can often spot a phishing email by the following characteristics:

• Misspelled words
• Email addresses that are close but not an exact match to the organization (ex: uamc versus uabmc)
• Sense of immediacy with urgent language that stresses the importance of doing something now
• Capitalizing on national events (ex: The War on Ukraine or COVID)
• A request for information of some kind

To combat phishing emails, we hope you will take a moment to pause when reading an email before responding or clicking. If you are unsure whether the email is a phishing email or not, forward the email to phishing@uabmc.edu. You may also wish to call the colleague that the email is “from” in order to verify it was indeed sent from that colleague.

The most important thing is to not click on any links, download anything from the email, or respond to the email if you suspect it is phishing. Again, individuals should immediately forward to phishing@uabmc.edu if they have any feeling the email may be a phishing email.

Check out these additional security measures as well as security awareness videos aimed to protect UAB and UABHS employees from security risks. Plus, this security awareness toolkit is a great website to bookmark for future review.