Phishing scams hitting student accounts

Over the last week or so, thousands of emails have bombarded students, faculty, and staff—all ostensibly from Help Desk, or ITS, or some other official-sounding department of the University—that have threatened recipients with the disablement of their accounts, unless they reply with their passwords or other personal information.

Several student accounts have since been compromised, sending more spam and more phishing scams through the veins of University servers, and ending up in your inbox. Despite all of this, there's an easy way to prevent scammers from gaining access to your account and flooding us all with spam and other evils:

NEVER REPLY TO THESE EMAILS! ITS will never ask for your password or personal information by email. Requests for such information are fraudulent. Delete them and do not reply.

A better solution—one that keeps almost all of these messages from showing up in your inbox in the first place—is to turn on spam filtering, which not only gets rid of these phishing scams, but basically eliminates spam from showing up in your inbox, period.

To turn on spam filtering:

1. Log in to webmail.
2. Navigate to Options, at the top of the window.
3. Choose Spam Filter Configuration.
4. Choose your Spam Score; 5 is recommended. Lower numbers will apply stricter standards and may catch some legitimate mail; higher numbers will be more lenient and may allow spam through. I get no spam on 5.
5. Change Action to either "Move to Spam Folder" or "Delete Immediately." If you choose Move to Spam Folder, you can see all the emails that have been filtered out as spam before they're deleted.
6. Click Save Settings and say goodbye to spam!

Sadly, student accounts can be hacked by outsiders with malicious intent, even without you sending them your password. Another way to foil potential hackers is to change your password to something more secure. To do so, open your ePortfolio and choose "Password Manager" under the "Tools and Links" bucket. Ideally, your password should be at least 8 characters long and contain a mix of letters and numbers.

If you ever have questions about the legitimacy of an email purporting to be from the University, call the department from which it supposedly came, or call ITS Help Desk at 860 685-4000.

[DISCLAIMER] The information above reflects my personal advice only and does not necessarily represent the views of ITS or any other University department.

Facebook Strikes '12!

Devon Hopkins '11 creator of the Wesleyan Class of 2011 facebook group writes in to tell us that the rising frosh are already getting in on some awkward cyber interactions before, you know, real life. You can gawk at it here. Devon also writes that there was a good article apparently on this site concerning how to get your e-mail login. I can't find it, but if I remember correctly it's generally (first initial)(last name)@wes pass:wesid(initials). It's been a few years though, let me know if I'm wrong.

Edit:

anonymous said...
password is (first+last initial) + (wesid), I think

June 08, 2008 7:35 PM


jenn said...
yes, but some people have common names and their middle initial is added after the first letter of their last name. if that doesn't work try your first two letters of yur name, but who knows.

June 08, 2008 9:58 PM

And there you have it.

Edit by Isaac:
From Sam's comment, which is correct as far as I know:

Your password, if it's the same as it was last year, is the first two letters of your e-mail address, and then your WesID.

Your e-mail address is usually your first initial + last name, however, it may include a middle initial, you may get a number at the end if there are lots of people with what would be the same e-mail, and your e-mail address (the part before the '@') will not be longer than 12 letters. (And hyphens, etc., are not included in your address)