As a supplier, please see advice on how to deal with possible email scams that appear to originate from the University of Plymouth but are fraudulent. These will come in the form of requests for product quotations, product availability or fake purchase orders.
While the University cannot prevent this activity, we are actively working alongside members of our network in the Higher Education Procurement Association (HEPA) to collectively approach this challenge.
We want to share some common traits or themes of these fraudulent emails that we hope will help your company decide how to identify and address such correspondence:
- the email messages are often poorly written with misspellings and awkward sentence structures
- the sender's website links are not authentic to the University of Plymouth
- the email address used by the sender is in a subtly different format, such as '@plymouth-ac.co.uk', or ‘@plymouthac.uk’. A legitimate University email address will end in @plymouth.ac.uk
- emails may include an attachment that is designed to look like a purchase order and may include a logo or another graphic and a signature
- the University procurement email does not engage in requesting quotes or sending purchase orders
If you believe you have received a fraudulent procurement email that appears to be from the University of Plymouth, can you please forward it to our Procurement department: procurement@plymouth.ac.ukto verify its legitimacy.
If you are concerned about cybercrime or wish to report an incident, please visit the Action Fraud web page or contact them on 0300 123 2040. Action Fraud is the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime. You should report fraud to Action Fraud if you have been scammed, defrauded or experienced cybercrime.