Fake e-mail warning - from 30/01/20

Some of our clients and referring vets have made us aware of a potential e-mail scam, involving a message that appears to come from our Hospital for Small Animals Reception.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. A sample is provided below:

This e-mail is has not been sent from the Hospital for Small Animals, R(D)SVS or University of Edinburgh. It is not genuine.

We are following appropriate lines of enquiry to attempt to stop this activity. In the meantime, should you receive such an e-mail, please delete it.

The sample e-mail has a couple of warning signs associated with fake/malicious e-mail:

1. the e-mail is unexpected/unsolicited
2. the e-mail contains a long and dubious looking link. When you hover over this link, the text in the link (highlighted) doesn’t match the actual link (or URL)
3. the actual link or URL will take you to a non-University of Edinburgh web site (in this instance, relative to a web site hosted in Somalia - .so)
4. the sender has used broken English and doesn’t complete the final sentence
5. if clicking on the link when using a modern internet browser, the browser should alert to an “unsafe” website