Worms, Trojans, and scams are mutating and spreading. They may take the form of pop-up messages, e-mails, or worms sneaking through the network. Phishing scams are often phony e-mail messages that claim to come from financial institutions such as banks and credit unions, or from popular Web sites such as PayPal or Ebay.
Worms, Trojans, and scams are mutating and spreading. They may take the form of pop-up messages, e-mails, or worms sneaking through the network.
Phishing scams are often phony e-mail messages that claim to come from financial institutions such as banks and credit unions, or from popular Web sites such as PayPal or Ebay. These scams are designed to trick you into entering your account number, passwords, and other personal information into fraudulent forms hosted on malicious Web sites.
Other Internet scams may appear as e-mail messages from someone in another country promising you a percentage of a large sum of money in exchange for your assistance in collecting the funds from an overseas bank. Do NOT respond to these messages. They’re only looking for your personal bank account information, and with it, they’ll be the ones collecting money—yours!
Here are some tips to avoid getting “hooked” by these scams:
- Never reply to e-mails or pop-up messages asking for your personal information, and do not click any links in the messages.
- Keep your antivirus software updated. Antivirus software is available for download.
- Do not send personal or financial information to anyone through e-mail. E-mail is not a secure method for transmitting such information.
- Review credit card and bank statements when you receive them and make sure you authorized all transactions.
- Open attachments with CAUTION, even if you know who sent them. Remember that vendors will never send downloads or virus patches as attachments. Opening these will infect your computer and possibly the network.
If you have questions about potential e-mail phishing scams, call the NDSU IT security officer at 231-5870 or the NDSU IT Help Desk at 231-8685.
For more information about these and other scams—and what you can do about them—visit the NDSU IT security page.
