Email Banner
Many phishing emails, which attempt to steal your personal data, come from outside of the University. To let you know if a message comes from an external system, a yellow banner will be at the top of the email with the following wording:
*External sender: This message came from outside UConn. It might be safe, but use caution before interacting with links, attachments, or requests.*
The banner is informative and supplements your assessment of the content. If you do not recognize the external sender or if the message is unexpectedly from an external source, use additional caution before clicking on links, opening attachments, replying, or taking any other actions.
Some University-managed services such as ListServ, Microsoft 365, and HuskyCT will not be marked as external. Occasionally, an email that appears to come for a uconn.edu address will have a banner. In these cases, the message was sent from an external system but configured to use a UConn address.
Not all phishing messages come from outside of UConn. Criminals can and do use stolen UConn credentials to send fraudulent emails, and because they originate from within our email system, they will not have a banner. Phishing is an ongoing problem and to protect yourself, you must be careful with all email, especially if you did not initiate the contact or if the message contains unusual requests.