1,400 Maine School Students Receive Scam Email From Overseas Officials Say

It’s something that anyone with an email account has to deal with on a daily basis. Of course we are talking about those super-annoying scam emails that often involve phishing attempts.

It’s so prevalent that IT experts have said they believe upwards of a billion of those emails are sent to unsuspecting recipients each and every day. A billion! That’s 1 out of every 7 people getting a scam email every day. Wild.

It has become such a problem in corporate America that employees are usually required to complete online security training at least once a year to help keep their senses sharp when it comes to online threats against them and/or the company they work for.

Typically, however, we don’t usually hear about these types of phishing attacks happening in our schools. But, is that because they’re not happening or because we just don’t hear about it that much? Turns out, it’s the former.

According to an article that was published by WGME 13, one Maine school district is investigating a phishing attack that targeted more than 1400 students district-wide. WGME says the attack targeted students at MSAD 51 schools.

The news station is reporting that over this past weekend, an MSAD 51 student’s email was allegedly hacked in a phishing attempt. Officials familiar with the hack say that the email originated from outside the United States, somewhere in Bulgaria.

The superintendent of MSAD 51 says that an ‘unauthorized’ email message was sent to more than 1,400 of the district’s student in an attempt to gain confidential information using the kids’ Gmail accounts.

WGME went on to explain that the email appeared to be about a fake job offer for remote work and asked the unsuspecting students to provide telephone numbers. The email also requested that the students reply to the email, but from a private email account and not their school account.

The news station says that the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office