Phishing (e-mail scams)

"Phishing" e-mails – those messages designed to get you to reveal your personal information so they can access your accounts and steal your identity – have become more frequent and more targeted to SNC. This targeting makes them more dangerous because they’ve learned things about the College and adjusted their messages accordingly to try and make them seem more legitimate. Unfortunately, some SNC users have fallen for these scams and the results have been very serious, both for the individuals and the College.

You never need to wonder whether these messages are legitimate. They’re not. Ever. We never ask for personal information via e-mail.

The only time we ever contact you about your account is if you’re nearing your quota or if your password is expiring (every 180 days). Those messages, shown here (login required), do not ask you to send any information via e-mail. It’s certainly okay to ask if something’s legit – we would much rather have people call and ask every day than have one person fall for a scam – but unless it’s one of those two messages, the answer will always be no.

What happens when someone responds to a phishing scam

• What happens to you: Your e-mail account is taken over. The perpetrators can then send e-mail (spam) from your account, forward your mail to their own account so they get a copy of everything you get, and read everything you have saved in your e-mail. Think about all of the things in your e-mail – pay stubs with bank account numbers, messages from banks and online accounts, etc. With the information you send them and what they collect from your e-mail, the criminals will probably have enough to steal your identity.
• What happens to the College: The College gets blacklisted. It only takes one person to mess things up for the entire College. How? Once they’re in your account, they use it to send spam. Spam coming from an snc.edu address causes SNC to get blacklisted, so e-mail from all snc.edu addresses is blocked by outside companies/organizations. This gives SNC a bad reputation and causes a lot of work for our IT staff who have to get us off of the blacklists.

Examples of some of the scams we’ve seen

Subject: ST. NORBERT COLLEGE INTERNET USER
From: St. Norbert College <webmaster@snc.edu>
Message body: asks for User ID and Password, and threatens to deactivate the webmail account if the recipient does not reply.

Subject: Confirm Your School Webmail Details
From: School WebMail Support Team <info@websupport.com>
Message body: asks for E-mail id, Password, and Date of Birth, and threatens to suspend the webmail account if the recipient does not reply.

Subject: Dear Edu Subscriber
From: customersadmin@eduboard.edu
Message body: asks for your "Edu Email Account Username and Password" and threatens to "render your email account deactivated from our database."

For non-SNC scams, the messages appear to come from an established, trusted business (AOL, Amazon.com, eBay, PayPal, etc.) or financial institution (US Bank, Wells Fargo, Citibank, etc.) with whom lots of people do business. They may claim that there's a problem with your account, that they've had computer system problems and lost your information, or that there's been fraudulent activity on your account (which is exactly what they intend to perform!). They ask you to click on a link in the message to go to the company's web site and "verify" or "update" your personal information. If you click the link in the e-mail message, however, the web site it takes you to will be a fake site run by the scammers, which they've set up to look *exactly* like the real site for that company. Whatever information you enter on the fake site gets sent to the criminals, who then use that information to get into your account(s).

There are many variations of these and you should not rely on any particular word or address to identify them. Instead, just remember that no legitimate company or organization would solicit personal information in this way.

There's no end to the types of clever scams they think up. There are even scams where they take over someone's e-mail account, and then e-mail all the person's friends pretending to be the person. They claim to be having some kind of problem and need money, for example that they've traveled to another country and were robbed and need money to get home.

What to do when you get a phishing message

Just delete it. That’s all. Really.

How to avoid becoming a victim of one of these scams

This is an area where the technology can't protect you (until someone invents anti-scumbag software!), so you have to protect yourself. There’s no need to avoid online shopping, banking, and bill paying, just use good common sense & caution.

• Remember that real banks, financial institutions, and other companies do not send you e-mail asking for personal information. Ever. (If they did, then you wouldn’t want to do business with them anyway.)
• Never click on any links in the message or call any phone numbers listed in the e-mail. If you’re concerned that the message might be a legitimate SNC message, call the Help Desk. If you think it might be from your bank or credit card company, get out your card or statement and call the number listed there. If you think it might be from an online company, go to their home page by typing the address yourself (e.g., www.paypal.com).
• Be suspicious of everything. While this may not be a healthy attitude to have in your daily life, you have to learn to think that way when you're online, because it may help you avoid doing something you'd kick yourself for later.

What to do if you’ve responded to a phishing scam

Immediately change your password to something that’s as complicated as you can make it – using symbols, upper- and lower-case letters, and numbers – and is completely unlike your previous password. (No, you can’t just stick a different number to the end of the same password. You shouldn’t be doing that anyway!)

If it’s your SNC account, call the Tech Support Help Desk right away and ask to speak to a professional so that we can advise you further, and also so that we can assess any damage to the College’s systems and resources. If it’s a non-SNC account, contact the company via telephone, explain what happened, and have them put the appropriate fraud alerts on your account.

If you only remember one thing...

We – or any other legitimate financial institution, company, or organization – never ask you for personal information via e-mail.

Questions

If you have questions about this or if you are ever unsure about the legitimacy of an e-mail query, please call the Technology Support Help Desk at xHELP/4357 or e-mail helpdesk@snc.edu.

Assistance and questions

If you have any questions or need more information, contact the Help Desk at (920) 403-HELP (4357) or helpdesk@snc.edu. The Help Desk is for St. Norbert College students and employees only.