Scam email pretending to award a grant to students circulates Bristol uni

In what might be the most transparent spam email yet, a number of students have reported receiving a message offering a grant from the British government in exchange for some personal information.

The poorly-worded email told recipients they’d been selected for a “student educational grant by the British government”.

It went on to say they’d been selected “not only based o [sic] academic performance but also myriads of other factors”.

The suspicious looking email said that to ensure students received this grant they were required to submit their details via a link provided.

Unsurprisingly, this was good to be true.

Would you fall for this?

A spokesperson for the university confirmed the message was spam. They said: “This is clearly a phishing email and recipients should delete it without clicking on the link.

“The university would never ask students to divulge in personal information in this way”.

Ben, a recent graduate, is one of those who received the email. He said: “At first I thought it was some much-deserved acknowledgement for my Contemporary Feminist Thought essay on social customs. Upon further inspection, the email was full of typos and mistakes.

“Also I thought it slightly strange that they were offering me an educational grant even though I have left university and now have a job. Better late than never I suppose.

“My view is that a scammer might have an incentive to badly write this sort of email intentionally. Because that way, those who click the link and sign up are the really gullible ones so it sort of sifts out the in-betweens, who may click the link but then realise it’s a scam and close it.