Phishing remains an ever popular way to get computer users to install malicious code or visit sites that they didn\u2019t choose.\u00a0 Many of the phishing attempts here at Swarthmore seem to fall into one of two categories:<\/p>\n
–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Email account and\/or password related
\n–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Government related (i.e., IRS, Federal Reserve, ACH, etc.)<\/p>\n
It should be pretty easy to recognize the first category since Swarthmore ITS will never<\/span> ask for your password in an email and will never<\/span> disable your email account while actively enrolled at or employed by the college.<\/p>\n As for emails that appear to come from the U.S. Government, the question to ask yourself is whether the sending organization (typically spoofed) actually has your Swarthmore email address?\u00a0 Also, would that organization really try to reach you by email without prior contact by you?!\u00a0 I\u2019m pretty sure the Federal Reserve Bank doesn\u2019t maintain a list of Swarthmore email addresses!<\/p>\n Phishing emails typically try to elicit an immediate reaction from you (say, panic) so that you\u2019ll click on the provided link or open the attachment without thinking.\u00a0 Next time you get one of these emails, ask yourself the questions above and whether the situation makes sense.\u00a0 And, if you\u2019re still unsure, don\u2019t hesitate to check it out with Client Services or me.<\/p>\n You also have a better chance of spotting faked URLs (web page links) in email if you display them as text rather than HTML.\u00a0 For more on reading email as text, see this blog article<\/a>.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a whole page of prior phishing attempts against the community here<\/a> and below are some recent phishing email Subject lines (note spelling errors):<\/p>\n Your Tax Return<\/p>\n Federal Tax Transaction Cancelled<\/p>\n Western Union transfer is available for withdrawl<\/p>\n Facebook Password Reset Email Issue<\/p>\n Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration<\/p>\n Notice of Underreported Income<\/p>\n etc. , etc., etc.<\/p>\n Stay safe, Phishing remains an ever popular way to get computer users to install malicious code or visit sites that they didn\u2019t choose.\u00a0 Many of the phishing attempts here at Swarthmore seem to fall into one of two categories: –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Email account and\/or password related –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Government related (i.e., IRS, Federal Reserve, ACH, etc.) It should be pretty easy to recognize the first category since Swarthmore ITS will never ask for your password in an email and will never disable your email account while actively enrolled at or employed by the college. As for emails that appear to come from the U.S. … Continue reading How Do You Like Your Phish?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,112,96,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accounts-and-passwords","category-email","category-security","category-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph2nPL-lI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1352,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/1352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/its\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"