Effective Date
The following email security feature will take effect after March 17, 2021.
Purpose
Most email scams begin with messages from an external email system. You can check our new Phish Bowl Utility to see if the email is phishing or legit on CSULB Phish Bowl. On this site you can validate messages. Just copy & paste the email text into the box and click Submit to get an AI review. Note: Paste text only - screen shots or images won't work. AI is helpful but not perfect. If you're still unsure, forward the email to alert@csulb.edu and we'll take a look. As part of the University's effort to reduce phishing threats and other email scams, external email messages will now receive an "External" tag in the message.
Many safe and legitimate email messages come from external email systems. The "External" tag does not mean the message is a scam, but it does provide additional information about the message source, which is there to help you determine it's legitimacy.
In Which Email Applications Will I See This?
Outlook will display a new "External" tag on emails in some Outlook applications, which only include:
- Outlook on the web (this is your CSULB email account accessed via SSO)
- the new Outlook for Mac
- Outlook for iOS
- Outlook for Android
As shown in the following sample screen shots, the sender's email address can be viewed at the top and will be included at the top of the reading pane or by clicking the External tag.
Outlook on the web view of External tags
Outlook for iOS views of External tags
External tag in the message list view:
External tag when reading chosen email:
View of sender's email address after tapping External tag for more information, which displays a message indicating the email address is outside the organization:
