Phising and spam

Published: 2-11-2013 8:45 am

Greetings all,

I thought I would take a moment to send the semi regular reminder about phishing attempts.  Most of us received one last night composed by a someone who did some research into campus phone numbers and hours, so it had some air of legitimacy, but it was not legitimate.  

A few reminders of telltale signs of a phishing attempt:

1)  The e-mail asks you to respond in e-mail with your username and password.  A legitimate entity will NEVER ask you to turn your password over to them in e-mail (or frankly in any other way).  

2)  We specifically make an effort to send out IT related campus announcements from my e-mail address only.  

3)  If I ever compose an e-mail with grammar as poor as the one we received last night, someone please take me aside and gently put me out of my misery (and ask Lynette Lentz to revoke my diploma).  

On other e-mail related news, we've received notifications from a number of staff about spam e-mail accumulating in their Junk folder.  This is normal behavior and is the purpose of the Junk mail folder.  While we make every effort to mark spam in an automated fashion as e-mail enters the network, we do not delete that e-mail outright in case the systems inadvertently mark a legitimate e-mail as spam (what we call a false positive).  The Junk folder gives you an opportunity to look for these false positives, so that you can mark the sender as a trusted source for your e-mail.  The Junk mail folder automatically purges e-mail after a specific amount of time (which you can configure), so don't fret if you see spam in that folder - that just means the system is working as designed.

Thanks for your vigilance in watching out for phishing attempts and protecting your passwords!

JD