Tacoma school district employees upset over security test offering holiday discount

A recent security test has some Tacoma Public Schools employees upset.

The employees received an email, which appeared to be from HR, saying the school district had partnered with Amazon and that the employees could get holiday discounts and free shipping.

But it was fake — part of a monthly drill to train employees how to spot email fraud.

“This is purely an educational program that helps employees protect their personal information, and also helps the district prevent unauthorized access to our systems,” said Dan Voelpel, Tacoma Public Schools’ spokesperson.

Voelpel says there were ways to know if the email was real or fake and that employees have been trained to spot those flags.

“If you hover over the person’s name who sent the email to you, the actual address of the person who sent the message pops up and this would have been easy to tell this was a phishing email,” he said.

He added that the district understands the frustration, and they did send employees a letter Tuesday explaining that was not the intent.

“It’s not a success if we’re making our employees upset and frustrated,” Voelpel said. “That’s certainly not what we’re intending to do.”

Voelpel says similar email tests have helped cut the number of employees who click through by more than half, but the enticing holiday offer tricked more district staff and angered quite a few.

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On KIRO Radio’s Gee and Ursula Show, they asked: Did this security test cross the line?

“No, it is needed,” host Gee Scott said. “One of the biggest problems that’s facing our country right now, and one of the biggest industries to go into right now — you want to know what profession that is? Cybersecurity. There are a lot of companies that are having to pay off ransoms to these folks that want to hack them, and it is cheaper to pay the ransom than it is to wait to be able to get into your information.”

“So if this is the way you’re going to learn a lesson, you’re going to learn by ‘25% off all of your Amazon purchases’ and you clicked on a bad link? Good,” Gee said. “And if people are mad, maybe you learned your lesson, so I’m good with it.”

Host Ursula Reutin wonders if maybe the district could have picked a different message for this training so close to the holidays.

“If this is part of a monthly drill to train your employees, and you make it look like it came from the district, and you make it about the holidays, that was using your knowledge for how to be the best kind of scammer to entice employees. And then they’re not only embarrassed because they fell for it, but now it’s like, ‘OK, because of that?’ I don’t think it does anything to help morale,” Ursula said. “I think they could have found a different way around it.”

“People are angry,” she added.

“You mean that the fake scammers are acting like real scammers in order to mimic what people would do?” producer Andrew Lanier asked.

Listen to the Gee and Ursula Show weekday mornings from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.