Warning on bogus email ‘warnings’

UW-Green Bay’s IT security officer and network manager David Kieper recently distributed an advisory warning campuswide about the recent spate of potentially dangerous email messages (spam, of course) advising users that their email storage is over capacity or their accounts are expiring. Kieper’s message is worth repeating here, for benefit of out off-campus Log readers. He notes that these often contain links that take you to a web site where you are asked to enter your name, network account, network password, and/or birthdate. These messages are bogus phishing emails intended to lure you to a website operated by cyber criminals with the intent to steal your personal information. Red flags in these email messages:

• The sender’s email address is not an expected University email address.
• Messages from individuals or with attachments you are not expecting – these messages may ask you to log in to get a file or resource
• Messages that ask you to complete a task, often times with the threat of loss of some service
• A web link cleverly crafted to look like something we should trust

The University will never request your account or password for any routine account or email maintenance or to ensure your “account is active,” the CIT advisory said. If you ever receive such a request, you never click on any link in the message or reply to it — just delete the message.