Technology
Announcement Categories
- Technology Alerts (113 posts)
- Technology Announcements (157 posts)
Announcement Archives
- December 2007
- October 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- October 2004
See Also
Gone Phishing
Filed under Technology Alerts
Posted by Web Team, February 15, 2005
View all posts for February 2005
There’s a new scam in town much more sophisticated than the “Nigerian Letter” scam (see the FBI description). It’s called phishing and here’s how it works.
This new approach starts with an email purporting to be from a bank, ISP or other company with which you may do business. The email presents an apparently important reason for you to “confirm” information with them and gives you a link to an official-looking online form.
If you fill out the form, you are giving personal and financial information like credit card information and social security numbers to the scammers. This can lead to charges on your accounts or even identity theft.
Precautions
- Be suspicious
- Examine web addresses (URLs or Universal Resource Locators) in emails to see if they look like legitimate addresses
- In general, if a URL appears in anemail, type it into your browser rather than clicking (what you see maynot be what you get, and recent uses of foreign character sets allowsites to trick your browser.)
- If in doubt, check with the Help Desk (x2222, helpdesk@simmons.edu)
If you think someone’s phishing for you:
- Let the community know by letting us know (x2222, helpdesk@simmons.edu)
- Let the company know
- File a police report