Sharepoint Email Scam Alert

Sharepoint Email Scam

 

We are advising customers to be aware of the latest email scam circulating which is based on a Sharepoint Document sharing  approach. The recipient will receive an email stating “A file has been shared with ” … the recipients email address. It looks very much like the type of email notification sent out when someone shares a document using the Microsoft Sharepoint tool. But there are some tell tale signs that this is a scam (highlighted in yellow) :-

  1. Sender – The sender address is the same address as the recipient – a giveaway that this is an automated email scam.
  2. Title – Unexpected document title or name – the recipient was not expecting this document.
  3. Icons – The icons within the document are warped and misshaped which is not the case with an official MS Sharepoint document.
  4. Font – There are different fonts with the document – notice the Title and “Open” fonts are different.
  5. Links – This is the most obvious giveaway – if you hover over the the links (dont click) they do not link to the Microsoft Sharepoint platform but to a website that has been hacked.

If someone does click on the links to open the document it is likely that this will trigger a spyware installation attempt on so that hackers can steal data or take over control of the device – nasty.

Recommendations – We recommend educating your Team about this scam (by sharing this post) and then deleting the original email if you receive it. You should ALWAYS have a good quality Antivirus/Security program installed on all your devices – including smartphones. We don’t recommend using the free versions – consider this an investment in your companies security.