Individuals were found on UNB campus soliciting money for a bogus charity group called Children Joy Charity two weekends ago. STU students were notified on Wednesday afternoon with an email to be aware of these individuals.
“We want to alert and remind staff, faculty and students of this circumstance in case they are approached by anyone to donate,” said director of communications Jeffrey Carleton.
Students were informed of this incident but were not informed of another threat to the university made a few days earlier.
A threatening email was sent to faculty of four different universities on Saturday evening. The email was analyzed by both UNB Security and Fredericton Police and found to have “low risk”. They believe it’s spam.
STU administration sent faculty and staff a notification of the incident on Oct. 14.
Carleton said students were not warned because the threatening email did not involve them.
“Even though the email was low risk we decided we should still alert faculty and staff because it was a reminder of the emergency procedures and the procedures that should be followed in these types of incidents.”
The notification to warn staff was sent out by Vice President of Finance Lily Fraser.
“The email was from a false address sent to a much older STU email address used by admissions, hallmarks of a possible spam message,” said the statement.
Fraser said in the notification staff should still be cautious of any other suspicious emails and reminded them of the Emergency Procedures booklets available around campus and on the website.
Carleton said spam is beginning to be more and more of a problem.
“We’re getting a lot more spam emails. There has been a lot of them recently,” said Carleton. “I know it’s a real challenge for I.T. at UNB and STU and at other universities to continue to fine tune and calibrate your spam filters.”
