More than 60 e-mail scams have arrived at K-State in the past four months. Last May, the university began tracking and posting scams to the IT security homepage to serve as a reference for the campus community. On Sept. 25, the growing list of scams was moved to a page of its own. E-mail scams seen at K-State shows the date each scam arrived, the subject-line text, and a link to the full e-mail version. Continue reading “Growing list of e-mail scams gets separate webpage”
Tag: scams
Password-stealing e-mail scams are back!
Not surprisingly, last Friday saw the return of a spear phishing e-mail scam that tries to steal K-Staters’ eID passwords by tricking them into replying to a bogus e-mail pretending to be from the “THE KSU HELP DESK <hlpdsk@ksu.edu>”. What is surprising is that at least six K-Staters were duped by the scam and replied to the e-mail, thereby giving their eID password to criminals who promptly used the stolen credentials to sign in to K-State’s WebMail system and send large amounts of spam. This resulted in e-mail from K-State being temporarily blocked by Hotmail over the weekend.
Thus, a repeat of past warnings is warranted: K-State IT support staff will NEVER ask for your password in an e-mail! Nor will any reputable company. If you receive an e-mail asking for your password, assume it is a scam and delete it.
A copy of the scam e-mail from Sept. 5, along with dozens of other scams targeting K-State, is available on K-State’s IT security website. Hints on how to recognize a scam are also available.
Five things you should know about IT security at K-State
With the return of tens of thousands of students and arrival of thousands of new students, faculty, and staff, everyone needs to be reminded of the importance of protecting K-State’s information and technology resources. Here are five things about IT security that individuals need to be aware of as the semester begins:
- Never give your password to anyone in an e-mail message. Numerous different scam e-mails have been sent to K-Staters over the last eight months trying to trick people into replying with their eID password. K-State IT support staff will never ask for your password in an e-mail, nor will any legitimate business or organization. If you get such an e-mail, just delete it.
Continue reading “Five things you should know about IT security at K-State”
