Summary
Recognise and report phishing and suspicious email at NEO A&M College, mark mail as junk or not junk, and add a safe sender. Includes what to do if you have already clicked a link or given away your password.
Body
🚨 Junk, Phishing, and Suspicious Email
What to report, what to ignore, and what never to do.
✅ Before You Begin
- You need an active NEO A&M College account with SSO access
- The suspicious message still in your mailbox — do not delete it yet
- 🕐 Estimated time: 10 minutes
💻 Which Outlook do these steps describe?
Written for
Outlook on the web and
New Outlook for Windows, which share the same layout.
Classic Outlook for Windows is laid out differently — if your ribbon has a
Send / Receive tab, you are using classic. See
Classic Outlook vs. New Outlook.
👁️ How to Spot It 🕐 ~3 minutes | Read first
Phishing tries to make you act before you think. Urgency is the tell.
- It pressures you. Your account closes today; a payment failed; respond within the hour.
- It asks for credentials. NEO IT will never ask for your password by email, and neither will Microsoft.
- The address is not what it seems. Check the actual sender address, not the display name — anyone can set a display name to NEO IT Help Desk.
- It is a reply to nothing. A thread you were never part of, or an invoice you never ordered.
- It comes from a real colleague but reads oddly. A compromised account sends genuine mail from a genuine address.
💡 Tip: When in doubt, contact the person another way — by phone, or a new email you address yourself. Never reply to the suspicious message to ask whether it is genuine.
🚨 Report It 🕐 ~1 minute | Home tab
Reporting is better than deleting. It teaches the filters and warns other people at NEO who received the same message.
- Select the message. Do not open any attachment or link.
- Select Report on the Home tab.
- Choose Report phishing for anything trying to steal information, or Report junk for ordinary spam.
- The message is removed from your inbox and sent for analysis.
⚠️ Note: Block, beside Report, stops future mail from that sender but does not report anything. For phishing, report it — blocking alone leaves everyone else exposed.
💡 Tip: In classic Outlook the Report button is in the same place on the Home tab.
⚠️ If You Have Already Clicked Act now | Do not wait
This happens to careful people. Reporting it quickly is what limits the damage, and nobody at NEO IT will give you a hard time about it.
- If you entered your password: change it immediately, then call the Help Desk on (918) 540-6099.
- If you opened an attachment: disconnect from Wi-Fi, leave the computer on, and call the Help Desk.
- If you approved a multi-factor prompt you did not start: call the Help Desk straight away — someone has your password.
- If you sent money or card details: contact your bank as well as the Help Desk.
🚨 Warning: Do not delete the message, and do not try to fix it quietly first. The message is the evidence we need to find out who else was targeted, and the hours after a click are when it can still be contained.
🗑️ Junk and Safe Senders 🕐 ~3 minutes | Settings
For ordinary unwanted mail rather than an attack.
- Select Settings → Mail → Junk email.
- Use Add safe sender to stop a legitimate sender being filtered.
- Trust email from my contacts treats anyone in your contacts as safe.
- Useful, but it also means a compromised contact bypasses the filter.
- Mail wrongly filtered can be marked as not junk from the Junk Email folder.
⚠️ Note: Marking mail as junk teaches the filter for your mailbox. It is not the same as reporting phishing, which sends the message for analysis and protects everyone.
📞 Still Need Help?
If you encounter any issues not covered in this guide, please contact the NEO A&M College IT Help Desk:
🌐 Helpdesk Portal: support.neo.edu
📞 Phone: (918) 540-6099
📧 Email: neosupport@neo.edu
📍 Walk-in: I.T. Services, Library/Administration Building, 2nd Floor, Room 216
🕐 Hours: Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM