Staying safe during your studies

Campus Safety Team

Our campus safety team are situated on campus and are available 24 hours a day to help you feel as safe as possible.

Keele’s Campus Safety team can be seen patrolling the campus, as well as providing a rapid response to emergency incidents and requests (including first aid support), monitoring CCTV, conducting out of hours access and offering personal safety advise and so much more.

You can contact them by calling 01782 733999 or emailing campussafety@keele.ac.uk

Safezone app
We recommend all our students to download the free Safezone app on their smartphone from the Apple or Google Play Store. This will give you extra piece of mind when starting university.  The app can be used to anonymously flag urgent issues.  The app is in addition to our existing safety and security we provide and allows us to send mass text messages to students in an emergency.  Once you have the app you can:

•    Call for help – this will come through to campus safety wherever you are.
•    Raise a first aid alert – this will go through to the campus safety team only if you are on campus, who will summon a first aider.
•    Raise and emergency alert – this will go through to the campus safety team only if you are on campus,
•    Set a check in timer – for example, if it takes you 10 minutes to walk to your accommodation on campus, the app will prompt you to check in after 10 minutes, if you don’t it will alert the campus safety team.
•    Report an issue – for the campus safety team to investigate
•    Show My Location – identify your exact location at the touch of a button – useful if calling emergency services.

Personal Safety

It is important to us at Keele for you to stay safe during your time at Keele. Below are some tips on keeping safe:

•    Be Vigilant when you are out and try to walk with others, particularly at nighttime.
•    Make sure that you lock all windows and doors to your room/flat/house when you leave your accommodation.
•    Keep expensive items such as bags, jewellery, mobile phones and tablets out of sight when in public areas.
•    Never feel pressured into doing anything that you don’t want to do.
•    Plan how you will get home before you go out.
•    Make sure you know where your drink has come from and that it’s in your possession at all times.
•    Be careful about the amount of alcohol that you consume
•    To remain safe at night make sure that you walk in areas with good street lighting and try to use main roads and streets where possible.

Drink Spiking 

Drink spiking is when someone either puts alcohol or drugs into another person’s drink without their knowledge.  Spiking someone’s drink can carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence in the UK. It is important to always keep your drink with you to make it difficult for someone to spike your drink.  Students should remain cautious when they socialise, which includes:

•    Never accept drinks from strangers
•    Don’t leave your drink unoccupied
•    Stick with your friends or stay in groups
•    Don’t leave the venue alone
•    If you are feeling unusual tell someone immediately.

Scams

Some criminals specifically target international students, telephoning them pretending to be from a legitimate organisation (such as the UK Home Office an education agent or even UKCISA).  They demand money (calling it a “fine” for a non-existent immigration problem) and claim that if you do not pay them there will be damaging consequences. Such as deportation or cancelling your visa. Scams commonly use telephone, email, social media or the internet.

Phishing (pronounced fishing)

Phishing is an attack where criminals act as a trusted sender for sensitive information.  This may be your banks details or log in details.  Criminals will contact you through email, social media, WhatsApp and telephone calls. If you think that you have been targeted, please speak to Student Services and contact actionfraud.police.uk to report it.

 
Top tips to stop spamming and phishing:
•    Be suspicious of any requests for personal or financial information. Banks and reputable organisations will never ask you to confirm your bank details, logon information or personal financial information by email or text messages.
•    Phishing emails are often sent in bulk and are unlikely to include both your first name and last name.
•    Check the quality of the message for misspelling, poor grammar as they are often signs of phishing.
•    Wording such as “failure to respond in 24 hours will result in having your account being closed” these types of messages are to trick you into a sense of urgency and a quick response.
•    Think before you click, if you receive and email or a text message that contains a link that you are not sure about try hovering over it to check that it goes where it should do, if you are in any doubt, don’t risk it
•    Consider purchasing smart devices from a reputable brand so that more care has probably been taken into securing the device.
•    Don’t use the same password for more than one connected device or share passwords with those you already use for other online accounts.
•    Make sure that all your computers and mobile devices are protected with updated internet security software/app, and that access to these devices require a PIN or passcode.
•    Limit the amount of information you provide when setting up an app to what is necessary