Campus-wide notices
email sent August 25, 2008:
Subject: PLU NOTICE: Spam E-mails Pretending to be from PLU Tech Support
Date: 8/26/2008
To: The PLU Community
You may have received e-mail messages in the last few days, asking for your PLU e-mail password, that claim to have been sent from a PLU tech support address. Recent examples are:
PLU SUPPORT TEAM <help-desk@plu.edu>
The PLU Email Support Team <tech-Support-account@xxxxxxx.net>
SUPPORT TERM WEBMAIL.PLU.EDU <webmail.plu.edu@dataworld.com.ph>
These were NOT sent out by PLU Information & Technology Services. It is a rather clever phishing scam that has been around for several months and has targeted many universities. If you do reply with your password, the spammers use it to log into the PLU Webmail system and send out spam e-mails from your account. We have had this happen multiple times in recent days.
We will NEVER ask you to reveal your password or other such personal information via e-mail. If you receive such e-mails in the future, just delete them with confidence. And never hesitate to send an e-mail to comptelc@plu.edu to ask about the authenticity of such a message. You can also visit the following website for up-to-date information on avoiding being stung by spam and phishing scams:
http://www.plu.edu/~comptelc/support/cyber-safety.html
If you did reply to one of these phishing e-mails with your username and password, please change your password immediately. This will prevent your account from being used as a source of spam.
Thank you for your help!
email sent June 19, 2008:
Subject: PLU NOTICE: Alert about fraudulent emails
From: Information & Technology Services <comptelc@plu.edu>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2008
To: The PLU Community
Never respond to "official" looking email asking for personal information, no matter who it appears to come from or how official it looks. PLU will NEVER ask you to reveal your password or other such personal information via e-mail.
We are experiencing yet another wave of spam to PLU account holders, asking for us to verify their accounts. DO NOT respond to this request as your login information may be captured by the sender and your account used to distribute still more spam.
You may have received e-mail messages recently that claim to have been sent from a PLU tech support address such as "tech-support@plu.edu" or with subject lines such as "update your PLU.EDU email now", asking for your PLU e-mail password. These were NOT sent out by PLU Information & Technology Services. It is a rather clever phishing scam that has been around for several months and has targeted many universities. If you do reply with your password, the spammers use it to log into the PLU Webmail system and send out spam e-mails from your account. We have had this happen once in the recent past resulting in over 40,000 messages sent in two hours.
We will NEVER ask you to reveal your password or other such personal information via e-mail. If you receive such e-mails in the future, just delete them with confidence. And never hesitate to send an e-mail to comptelc@plu.edu and ask about the veracity of such a message. You can also visit the following website for up-to-date information on avoiding being stung by spam and phishing scams:
http://www.plu.edu/~comptelc/support/cyber-safety
If you did reply to one of these phishing e-mails with your username and password, please change your password immediately. This will prevent your account from being used as a source of spam.
Thank you for your help!
PLU Information & Technology Services
updated 8/26/2008