This is one of the announcements that college students receive from IT department.
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Over this month, the Department of Information Technology will put up a number of posters around campus to point out important issues for your consideration.
This Week's Thought:
Don't be a phish!
If someone tells you that they are into "social engineering," be wary. That is not something that is good. Social engineering is the act of stealing confidential information from someone. That activity is most typically done by phishing.
Phishing has rapidly grown to become one of the most prevalent forms of criminal activity on the Internet. What the crook wants is your personal information so that they can steal your electronic identity. With that identity, they can use your current credit cards/bank accounts, create new credit lines and spend it, and generally expect to get away with it. You, on the other hand, will be hit with bad credit reports and upset creditors demanding that you pay for things that you had nothing to do with.
So, how is phishing performed?
Generally, you are asked to enter some confidential personal information - passwords, social security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers - in response to email requests and sometimes to at websites. These emails and websites may look entirely real, but they are not.
Another common pressure that they use is to tell you that you have to respond in a short period of time or else your account will be suspended, deleted, etc.
How do you protect yourself?
A few rules of thumb:
* Never send your personal information by email.
* Never send your password by email.
* If it looks too good to be true, it is.
* If it looks fishy, they are looking for phish.
* If they give you a website address, don't use it, go to the company on your own.
* If you have a question, call the Fraud Department at the bank, company, etc.
* The "Delete" key is the most wonderful key ever made.
For more about phishing, go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing.
Here is a brief and entertaining video about phishing ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UddjreNhMEA
Don't get caught!
