Updated Phishing Alert!

As we start a new academic semester, it is important that we remind staff and faculty to be extremely careful when receiving email from others. The Help Desk has received numerous inquiries recently from customers concerned about email messages requesting account and personal information. These types of messages are commonly referred to as “Phishing”.

The most recent Phishing attempt reported to the Help Desk takes the forms of an email message stating:
“A Computer Database Maintenance is currently going on our Webmail Message Center. Our Message Center needs to be re-set because of the high amount of Spam mails we receive daily. A Quarantine Maintenance will help us prevent this everyday dilemma.”

The email goes on to request that the recipient visit a web page to “revalidate your mailbox” by providing some logon information – including user ID and password.

Please disregard this message – and any similar messages you may get in the future – it is a classic “phishing” attempt.

Neither Technology Services nor any legitimate organization, will ever request personal information – especially user ID’s and passwords from you via email.

Our email system blocks over 300,000 Spam message a day. However, we cannot eliminate all bogus email messages. Therefore, it is very important individuals understand how do identify Phishing attempts.

Never respond to an email requesting account or personal information.
The following information is provided by Microsoft. Click here to read more on phishing.

What does a phishing e-mail look like?
Phishing e-mail messages are designed to steal your identity. They ask for personal data, or direct you to Web sites or phone numbers to call where they ask you to provide personal data.

Phishing e-mail messages take a number of forms:
-They might appear to come from your bank or financial institution, a company you regularly do business with, such as Microsoft, or from your social networking site.
-They might appear to be from someone you know. Spear phishing is a targeted form of phishing in which an e-mail message might look like it comes from your employer, or from a colleague who might send an e-mail message to everyone in the company, such as the head of human resources or IT.
-They might ask you to make a phone call. Phone phishing scams direct you to call a customer support phone number. A person or an audio response unit waits to take your account number, personal identification number, password, or other valuable personal data. The phone phisher might claim that your account will be closed or other problems could occur if you don't respond.
-They might include official-looking logos and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites, and they might include convincing details about your personal information that scammers found on your social networking pages.
-They might include links to spoofed websites where you are asked to enter personal information.

Questions?
Contact the Help desk at (608) 246-6666.