Published
By CPC Helpdesk
Buying up key web domains related to your institution could well prove an intelligent investment, with such action helping protect your identity and weaken the ability of fraudsters to pass themselves off as your school, college, university or trust.
CPC wishes to alert members to reports of recent fraudulent activity that require your immediate attention. Fraudsters have registered a domain name closely resembling that of a legitimate institution - and have used the publicly available name of a genuine member of staff to unlawfully gain access to goods. This type of illegal activity could be easily replicated across the education sector. As part of our duty of care, we are notifying members without delay, to help safeguard your organisation.
As a standard for the UK education sector, .ac.uk web domains can only be obtained by eligible organisations through an approved registrar, or directly via Jisc. However, other related domains, such as .school, .college, and .university (top-level domains), are widely available for public purchase, thus making it easier for fraudsters to impersonate your institution. We strongly recommend you consider securing such domains to provide an extra layer of protection for your establishment.
If you encounter any such incidents of domain name fraud, please report these to Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime. This service allows individuals to report scams and obtain guidance on dealing with fraud-related issues. For further details on Action Fraud, please click here. Please also forward our update to your own Head of IT.
This situation also highlights the importance of keeping your member details up to date on our website, both to protect your organisation and to ensure compliance with GDPR. Please take this opportunity to update your information by using this link, as soon as possible. Remember to remove any users who no longer work for your organisation.
If you require further advice or information, please contact the CPC Helpdesk in the first instance on 0800 066 2188, or email [email protected]. You can also reach your dedicated Regional Procurement Advisor (RPA) by clicking here.
CPC is currently carrying out major data cleanse exercise and you may have received a letter asking for help in ensuring your contact details are up-to-date. Please login to your CPC account to check and verify data, as per these instructions:
Login to the CPC website.
Click the ‘Verify Membership’ button on the your CPC member dashboard, or click here.
Review your membership details and click ‘Submit’ to verify your data.
If you have any questions relating to domain fraud or our CPC data cleanse, please contact us via [email protected]