13 November 2023
Have you received an email with an urgent request? Was it from your manager? Did it ask you to purchase a gift card or an online voucher?
If you answered yes, it was most likely a scam email!
How can I recognise a voucher scam email?
The sender email address is usually a generic email address and sent from a third-party domain like Gmail. It may have the name of your colleague or manager in the sender field or the signature, taken from one of LSE’s public-facing department directories.
- Subject lines generally say, “Request”, “Available?”, “Urgent”, “Inquiry”, or similar vague messages, to grab your attention quickly.
- The initial email may ask you, “Do you have a minute?”, “I have a request, can you please drop me an email”, “Let me know if you’re free right now”, or “I’m in a meeting”.
Once you respond to these prompts, the sender may ask you to purchase vouchers or gift cards on behalf of them. The correspondence can continue for several emails before it gets obvious it is a scam.
Is my password at risk if I receive a voucher scam email?
Usually, bad actors who send these emails are not trying to steal your LSE credentials; instead, they will ask you to purchase gift cards or vouchers and send them the unredeemed code.
What should I do if I receive a voucher scam email?
It’s important to always double-check where an email has come from before responding to it, and particularly before fulfilling any requests or opening any links/attachments.
- If you’re checking your emails on your phone, the Outlook app may not automatically show the full email address.
- You can report voucher scam emails to Outlook by right clicking the email in your inbox > click Report > click Report phishing.
- Please attach voucher scams as a .eml/Outlook attachment to a new message and send them to phishing@lse.ac.uk - every report helps!
What should I do if I purchased the vouchers and sent the code?
If you paid the sender with gift cards, there is not much that we can do to help you get your money back.
- You can contact both your bank and the vendor to ask for a refund or stop the transaction.
- You can also report the incident to the police at https://www.actionfraud.police.uk.