Scammers impersonate University of Guelph, target students on emails

Students from the University of Guelph say they've been sent spamemailsfrom people who are pretending to be a part of the university's financial aid department.

On Wednesday morning, one student posted the emailshe received on the Facebook group "Overheard at Guelph."At least eight other students said they've received the same message.

In the email, the person identified as "Karen Laurent"from "Guelph Financial Aid Inc." asked students to provide their opinions on "matters important to Canadians."

"Your opinions help shape the decisions made by businesses, media and policy-makers across Canada while you are directly rewarded for your input," the email says.

The University of Guelph says the email is not related to the university and it was a phishing message"sent from an external email account."

"Following our standard procedure for dealing with phishing and scam messages, the computing and communications servicesinformation security team has blocked this sender and will purge all copies of this message from mailboxes to protect user accounts," a spokesperson from the university told CBC Kitchener-Waterlooin an email.

The university says users are encouraged to report any suspiciousmessages to the computing and communications services help centre by emailingithelp@uoguelph.ca.