Remember: The ITS Help Desk Will NOT Solicit Your Username Or Password In E-mail
Submitted: Wed, Apr 15, 2009 02:49 PM
As many of you are aware, Eastern recently became one of the latest universities to be targeted by Internet scam artists. This scam involved an e-mail claiming to be sent from a “Customer Care Center” asking the recipient to respond back and verify their username and password. Responding to this e-mail would not have ensured continued access to Eastern’s sytem but would instead have granted these scam artists access to your account.
As I mentioned above, this type of scam has become very popular at educational institutions over the past few months. These scam artists then use the access they gain for a number of different purposes. Some accounts are used to send out spam messages. Other accounts are used to commit further crimes against the organization. In some rare cases, these scam artists use these accounts to send out threatening e-mails threatening harm unless they are paid.
Please be aware that the Help Desk and ITS will never solicit information such as username or password via e-mail. If anyone did respond to this message it is important that they change their password immediately. For assistance on how to change a password, please contact the Help Desk.
Adam Dodge
Assistant Director for Information Security