fraudulant emails being sent under the name of SLC

angelofmel

from my uni portals:

Fraudulent phishing e-mails alert from Student Loans Company

February 4, 2011

There has been a recent increase in phishing activity targetting students and graduates who have registered with the Student Loans Company. Read the full article for advice to give to students who are worried about this.
Students registered with the Student Loans Company (SLC) are currently being targetted by fraudulent phishing e-mails, purporting to be from the SLC. The e-mails usually ask for confirmation/updating of bank details. The most recent example is the following:
The email reads:
“This is a formal notification of an important account update. Due to a recent update in our database we require all students to update their account information to ensure you receive your scheduled payment, and avoid a missed payment. To update your account information, click on the link below created specially for this purpose.
Please fill the requested information exactly as you filled it when you were signing up for student finance. or your payment will be suspended because of failed account verification.
Yours sincerely
Student Finance England”
Please be aware that examples like the one above are fraudulent phishing emails and are not from the SLC,Student Finance England or Student Finance Wales. Under no circumstances will the SLC/SFE/SFW email students or graduates asking them to confirm or provide bank details.
This is an ongoing problem, however the Student Money Service has received several calls from students within a couple of hours concerned about this. It is therefore clear that phishing activity has increased markedly very recently.
You might be contacted by students/graduates concerned about this. Please advise them that if they have been contacted by email requesting bank detail information, then they should ignore it.
If they have followed the link and provided bank details they are advised to go online and change their SLC password on their account as soon as possible. If they still have the email then they should forward it to [EMAIL="security@slc.co.uk"]security@slc.co.uk[/EMAIL]

apparently it could be sent to anyone regestered with SLC and are claiming to be from Student Finance England, Wales or SLC