How do I know if an email was sent from outside LETU?

Summary

To assist the LETU community in identifying emails sent from outside LETU, we mark these emails with an "External" tag.

What you need to know:

1. If an email is from a LETU email address, it will not be marked with an "External" tag.
2. Do not trust emails that have the display name of a LeTourneau employee but are marked as "External."
3. All emails marked as "External" require careful analysis to determine whether they are legitimate.

Some cloud (outside LETU) applications are trusted by LETU. Emails from these applications will not be marked with an external tag:

• IT Service Desk (TeamDynamix)
• LETU Cybersecurity Awareness Training (InfosecIQ)
• Concur Solutions

Details

Every email you receive requires you to make a decision as to whether you can trust the content of that email and whether the sender is who they say they are. Many times, phishing emails may impersonate a person at LETU in an attempt to get you to trust the email.

For example, let's say you have a classmate at LETU named Miriya Sterling, and you receive an email from her. The email looks like this:

From: Miriya Sterling <indigo@stateoftexas3.us>
Subject: Review this document

Can you take a look at this document?

classnotes.docx

Or maybe your email app hides the email address, and all you see is this:

Miriya Sterling
Review this document

Can you take a look at this document?

classnotes.docx

In the second example, you can't see that Miriya's email isn't miriyasterling@letu.edu like it should be, so it's more difficult for you to determine whether you should trust this email or not.

For this reason, LETU is marking all emails that we receive from off-campus with an External tag. With this tagging, this email will look like this:

External Miriya Sterling
Review this document

Can you take a look at this document?

classnotes.docx

Since it's less likely that you'll receive an email from Miriya, seeing this External tag, you can immediately be suspicious of this email. At that point, you can simply delete the email or text Miriya to find out if she accidentally sent you an email from an off-campus email address she has.

Depending on the email app you're using, this will look similar to the following: