NOTE:  Beginning May 1, 2017, please use these new instructions to report phishing and spam messages.  You no longer need to send the spam or phishing messages to the ITS Help Desk - please use instructions below. 

Phishing scams are an attempt to steal information, such as usernames, passwords, or other personal information, by sending official-looking emails from University administration, the IRS, or other professional entities.  A good rule of thumb is that any email that asks for personal information is likely fraudulent.

Spam emails are more often than not attempting to sell products or drive traffic to a website.  Spam emails are considered more of an annoyance than malicious, though websites linked in spam emails could contain malware or viruses. You can delete the messages, create a rule to mark as spam, or report directly to Microsoft (see below).

See How to Recognize and Avoid a Phishing Scam for more details.

How to report a phishing scam to UI Phishing Team

For more detailed information on attaching the email with various email clients see How do I forward an email with full headers?

1. Create a new email message
2. Address it to ui-phishing@uiowa.edu
3. From your inbox, select the phishing email that you received - you must select the email, not the content.  NOTE:  you may need to make your new message window smaller so you can see your Inbox and the new message at the same time. 
4. Drag and drop the selected item(s) into the new email.
5. This will now show as an empty email with the phishing email as an attachment.
6. Send the email to the ui-phishing@uiowa.edu address.

How to report Spam to Microsoft

1. Select the message that is junk and move it to the Junk Email folder.  Moving a message to the Junk Email folder will automatically be reported to Microsoft. 

For more information about managing your Junk Email, see How Do I Manage Junk Email and Spam?

See Microsoft's instructions for more details on reporting spam