UA Cautions its Students about a Phishing E-mail Campaign

THE CRIMSON WHITE reported on 22nd January, 2014 stating that The University of Alabama, based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA, in recent times gave warning to students to be wary of a phishing email entitled "New year Upgrading" as they says that it was a process to steal their usernames and passwords.

The email was the latest in a series of scams attempting to steal login information of students which began appearing frequently in inboxes during the fall semester.

Last semester, the University regularly sent emails warning students not to fall for email scams and students were also warned not to open emails that appeared to have come from the administration but actually came from fake websites and trying to steal email and password information of students.

THE CRIMSON WHITE published a report on 22nd January, 2014 quoting Ashley Ewing, Director of Information Security and Compliance of University of Alabama as saying "spammers were responsible for the scam emails in the fall. In order to make money, spammer needs to send millions of emails and the easiest way to do that is to gather other people's information."

Ewing also said that spammers are generally not interested in placing malicious viruses on your computer but simply in stealing your information and they will lure you to a website to trick you into typing in your email and password information."

Disassociating itself from the phishing email campaign, the University said to remember that they will never ask your password through an email or send a link with an email that requests for your password.

Officials investigating phishing email campaign comment that it is unfortunate that due to phishing email campaigns of the abovementioned types which is leading to a surge in phishing on the Internet.

The University highlighted simple security steps to mitigate the chances of being victimized by this phishing email campaign. Firstly, if you receive such email, please delete it from your inbox immediately and if you have already answered such email then change your email password instantly. However the university advises victimized students to contact its IT Service Desk at its hotline number given on its official website http://oit.ua.edu in case they need any assistance to change email password.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/3/2014