Spam: Is unsolicited "salesy" email or advertisements. It's annoying, but generally harmless.
Phishing: Is dangerous, attempts to extort money from you or to trick you into logging into a compromised system to capture login credentials, often to be used in theft or criminal activity.
One of the most common phishing attempts - the "gift card phishing scam" has been around for several years and we still have reports of this even recently. It often starts with an email that LOOKS to be from your co-worker or supervisor or director or Principal or Superintendent. It often starts with a "Hey, are you available?" question. Looking at the email address, you should notice that it's a personal Gmail (or Yahoo or other) email address - NOT a real NHUSD email address.
If you respond to the email, the criminal will give you a convincing story about why they need your help, to get them giftcards to pay a family or student or some other made-up reason. Often they will try to prey on your emotions to trick you. This is called "social engineering". Believe it or not, some criminals are using Artificial Intelligence or AI to make this more convincing today, and are switching to chats that use voice and AI-generated speech that sounds just like the person who they are claiming to be. It can be very convincing.
What should you do?
If the message is Spam, look at the initial Spam email, and just to the right of the Reply arrows, click the "More" button (shown as 3 dots, and circled in Red in the image below). You will see a menu pop-up. Click on "Report Spam".
If this message is Phishing, look at the initial Phishing email, and just to the right of the Reply arrows, click the "More" button (shown as 3 dots, and circled in Red in the image below). You will see a menu pop-up. Click on "Report Phishing".
What happens next?
Report Spam - moves the email to the user's Spam folder and (if enough other people do this) will automatically mark this as Spam for others.
Report Phishing - does the same as above but alerts Google's system that this is a more dangerous email and Google engineers will typically delete Phish emails from the Inboxes of those who have received it within a couple of hours.
Yes, a couple of clicks from you can reduce Spam for hundreds or thousands of us.
Your clicks can also reduce phishing attacks for hundreds or thousands of us.
Pretty cool, huh? You've got the power!
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