An Instagram post caught my attention this week. A University of Alberta student described being phished through a fake accusation of academic misconduct.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/Dcl1uJnubqD
The scam did not rely on advanced technology. It did not require artificial intelligence or an elaborate hacking scheme. The scammer needed one thing: a strong feeling, delivered before the target had time to think.
That should concern anyone who works with students.
The Emotional Attack
Cybersecurity training focuses on information, such as:
- Do not click unfamiliar links.
- Check the sender’s address.
- Watch for unexpected attachments.
These are important tips that everyone should follow.
There’s a second part, that is just as important to pay attention to: how a person feels in the moment they read a message. As Guy Curtis and Amanda White point out in their recent research article, an allegation of academic misconduct can cause students distress and anxiety.
Fear produces urgency. Sympathy produces a desire to help. Excitement makes a person overlook details they would otherwise catch. Embarrassment stops a person from asking a friend or colleague whether something looks right.
None of this requires a scammer to outsmart the target’s technical knowledge. The scammer only needs to get past the target’s pause button, and feelings do that work quickly.
Once a person thinks, ‘I need to do this right now,’ the scammer has already won half the exchange.
Why This Matters for Students
Consider the situations a university student faces in a given semester. Tuition deadlines. Financial aid. Scholarships. Housing applications. Job offers. Academic standing. A friend who needs help fast. None of these topics is suspicious on its own. Students encounter them constantly, which is exactly why a scammer can use any one of them as a disguise.
A student who reads a message claiming that something important is at risk rarely stops to ask, ‘Is this a phishing attempt?’ The more immediate question is, ‘How do I fix this?’ That question is the trap. The scammer counts on the student staying inside it.
Urgency as a Weapon
Fraudsters have relied on manufactured urgency for a long time. Consider these common tactics: You have only a few minutes. Your account will close. Pay immediately. A friend needs help right now.
Urgency changes the question a person asks. Instead of ‘Is this legitimate?’, the target asks ‘How fast can I resolve this?’ The scammer controls that shift, and once it happens, careful judgment tends to disappear.
Students cannot reasonably treat every email or text with suspicion. That approach is not realistic, and it is not sustainable. What do to instead: when a message produces a strong emotional reaction, pause. The stronger the reaction, the more the pause matters.
Where Colleges and Universities Fit In
This is not only a student problem. Universities invest in cybersecurity training. Students learn about phishing, password hygiene, and multifactor authentication. That training is necessary, but it does not address scams built specifically to manipulate emotion.
When we teach cybersecuirty, we must include an emotional literacy component. Students should learn to notice when a message is working to make them afraid, guilty, excited, embarrassed, or suddenly responsible for solving an urgent problem. Orientation sessions, residence programming, and digital literacy initiatives are reasonable places to build this in.
The guidance itself is simple. If a message makes a person feel they must act immediately, they should stop. Then they should verify the request through a channel they already know is legitimate, not the phone number or link the message provides. The university website, the student portal, the bank, the employer: these sources exist independently of the suspicious message, and they are the ones worth contacting.
One extra minute, spent verifying, separates a student who avoids a scam from a student who becomes its next case study.
Rethinking Phishing Awareness
Fraud prevention cannot stop at spotting suspicious technology. The scammers doing the most damage right now often look ordinary. Scams arrive through platforms students already trust and tell a believable story. They contain no typos, no broken links, nothing that trips a spam filter.
The strength of the scam comes from something else entirely: an accurate read of how people behave under emotional pressure.
When considering cybersecurity we must account for psychology, as well as technology. Students do not need a degree in information security to protect themselves. They need the instinct to notice the feeling first and pay attention to it before acting. Panic, urgency, fear, excitement, guilt, an overwhelming pull to help someone right away. Any of these is reason enough to stop.
Step back. Verify independently. Then decide.
The scam rarely starts the moment someone clicks a link. It starts the moment a message succeeds in making a person react before they think.
Closing Remarks
An allegation of academic misconduct can cause students to panic and feel all kinds of emotions, including anxiety and terror. Those of us who work in education need to attend as much to our students’ well being, dignity and humanity as much as holding them accountable for their behaviour.
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Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is a Professor and Research Chair in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer.
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D. 
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