Reporting suspicious emails

Different methods have been made available to students and staff which allow you to report emails which are considered as either Spam or Phishing.

Spam or Junk emails are often classed as unsolicited emails which may focus on advertising and selling goods or services. You may have never signed up for these emails in the first place. A large number of Spam or Junk emails may be received in a small time frame.

Phishing emails are messages which often contain false links or attachments designed to fool the recipient into opening and disclosing personal information. The sender of these emails can then use your identity for illegitimate purposes.

If you believe that you have received either of these message types, you can report them depending on the way you access your email:

Office 365 Web App

If you access your emails through a web browser, you can report spam or phishing emails by using the following process:

  1. Do not open the contents of any attachments or click any links.
  2. With the suspicious email showing, click the Report message icon (see images for the default and the new versions of the web app) Illustrative image   Illustrative image
    Note: if the email has been automatically moved to your junk folder it will have already been reported to Microsoft, therefore you won't be able to report it, in this case manually delete the email instead
  3. Select the appropriate option depending on whether the email is Spam or Phishing.
  4. If you select Junk of Phishing, the message will be deleted

Outlook 2016

If you use Outlook 2016, which is installed on all University workstations, you can report spam using the process below:

  1. Do not open the contents of any attachments or click any links.
  2. With the suspicious email showing, click the Report message icon Illustrative image
    Note: if the email has been automatically moved to your junk folder it will have already been reported to Microsoft, therefore you won't be able to report it, in this case manually delete the email instead
  3. Select the appropriate option depending on whether the email is Spam or Phishing.
  4. If you select Junk of Phishing, the message will be deleted

Forwarding email address

If you’re in the scenario where either of the the above two methods are unavailable, the University has provided an email address which you can forward suspicious emails to. This is can be useful if you use another email client or the Outlook Mobile App.

To use this, simply forward the suspicious email to reportspam@chi.ac.uk.

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