Although the e-mail claims to be from MSU, Beth Bonsall, spokeswoman for MSU’s Academic Technology Services, or ATS, said MSU would never ask students for personal information such as passwords.

“Anytime you see an e-mail like this asking for personal information, it did not come from MSU,” Bonsall said.

E-mail scams, commonly known as phishing, are a constant occurrence, Bonsall said. However, ATS has antivirus software and spyware that limits the amount of phishing that makes it to accounts.

During the past few days, the level of phishing attempts has been “intense,” Bonsall said.

Bonsall said ATS was unable to give specific numbers of how many MSU accounts received the e-mail because it is difficult to track.

Alex Liu, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, said scammers — typically called “crawlers” — will process Web pages to compile e-mails. Once they have a large amount of e-mails, they will send out a message either asking for the recipient to provide personal information, or will provide a link where recipients are asked to input information, Liu said.

Once a crawler has access to personal information, he or she will try to gain access to other information, such as bank and e-mail accounts.

“For example, suppose I got some information. You may have some money in a bank. I know your Social Security number, and I have your e-mail and such,” Liu said.

“I am going to go to the bank and I will tell them I forgot my password. Now I can transfer money from your account.”

Liu said there are easy ways to identify phishing e-mails, including looking for anything out of place in URL links.

“One easy way to identifying those phishing e-mails is that if they ask you for your username and password — that is usually phishing,” Liu said.

Some students said they knew it seemed suspicious when they received the e-mail.

“I suspected right away that it was (phishing), because I knew MSU would never ask me to e-mail my name and my password,” human biology senior Erika Schmeck said.

Although she initially suspected the e-mail was fake, she said she double-checked because it was addressed from MSU officials.

“For a minute, it looked real,” she said. “I had to check with (my roommate) to see if she had got one, too.”

Bonsall said if anyone responded to the e-mail, they should contact the ATS help desk and change all their passwords immediately, as well as contact any other institutions they feel might have been compromised.