Employees of the University of New Mexico Receive Phishing E-mail

According to a news report, the University of New Mexico (UNM) has become a recent target of phishers who are sending a fake e-mail to its employees.

It has been found that the phishing e-mail is also targeting the employees of Health Sciences Center (HSC) of the University.

The phishing e-mail says that it is sent by the Information Technology Service (ITS) Center of UNM and informs the recipients that the University's Mail system will not be available due to the scheduled maintenance.

The e-mail asks employees of UNM and HSC to send reply and confirm their e-mail information.

However, the Information Technology Service Center has claimed that the e-mail is a phishing attempt and its sender has been identified as a spammer residing outside the state.

The University has posted a warning on its official website, asking employees to be careful of the fake e-mail looking for account information.

Meanwhile, the ITS Center has reminded employees that it doesn't send unsolicited e-mail messages that ask the recipients to validate their e-mail addresses or passwords. Moreover, the Center has clarified that it doesn't seek any type of personal information which is asked in this particular phishing e-mail.

The Center has told the employees that if they receive this kind of phishing e-mail, then they should delete it immediately.

As a precautionary measure, the ITS Support Center has blocked the responses to this phishing e-mail. At the same time, employees who have already replied to the e-mail with their personal information should reset their NetID password immediately, said the Center. They should also bring the bogus e-mail into the notice of University's administration so that further instructions could be given.

If employees have any problem regarding the legitimacy of the e-mail, then they should contact the Center at its helpline numbers.

Security experts have also claimed that the phishing attacks by both spammers and phishers continued to remain high. The phishing attacks on the US universities and webmail systems have escalated in the past few months. The University of Arkansas and the Northwestern University also reported phishing e-mail scams in June 2009.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/14/2009