Warning about current scam emails

An increased number of different scam emails are currently being sent to many members of the University of Münster.

Several different campaigns have been observed in which the attackers pose as university employees, supervisors, or conference organizers. In these emails, items are offered as gifts, recipients are asked to purchase gift cards or prepaid cards, or alleged bookings for conference attendance are confirmed. All of these are fraud attempts aimed at getting recipients to make payments through various channels.

The following subjects have been observed:

• Would you be available to help with a quick task?
• Reservation Confirmation for [...]
• Schweißgeräte und Werkzeuge

Please do not reply to these emails, and under no circumstances respond to the requests! Always check the sender's address and the digital signature. Always be skeptical of free or unexpected offers and look into them before responding.

With our eight-point checklist 'How to detect scam emails', you can independently determine whether an email is a scam attempt.

How to handle suspicious emails at the University of Münster
If you receive a suspicious email referring to the University of Münster (e.g. fake email addresses using uni-muenster.de or wwu.de, links to login pages that imitate the corporate design of the University of Münster, identity theft of University employees etc.), please inform CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) of the University of Münster immediately. Forward the suspicious email as an attachment ("Forward as attachment" in Outlook or by using the key combination Ctrl + Alt + F) to spam@uni-muenster.de