Don’t fall for the phish trick

The Oxford English Dictionary defines phishing as “Fraud perpetrated on the Internet; spec. the impersonation of reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, online.”

Everyday thousands of email messages are sent to and from the College of Charleston.  Unfortunately some of these messages are phishing, sent in hopes that you will respond with your login, password, or other personal information.  Phishers often use email as their preferred method of attack. The email will appear to have been sent from an authoritative source using a name like Helpdesk, Webmail Help Desk, Webmail Team, Webmaster, CofC Webmaster. The trick to identifying phishing is not just in the sender’s name or email address, but in what the email asks you to do. The email will typically request that you send your username and or password to the requestor by either replying to the email or visiting a website link included in the email. If you see any request for username or password in an email, you have got phishing. No department or unit at the College of Charleston will ever request your username and or password by email or phone.

If you see any of the following phrases in an email, you have phishing.  Please delete the message.

  • You have exceeded the storage limit on your mailbox.  Please Copy/click the below link and fill the upgrade form.
  • This is to inform you that you have exceeded your email quota limit of 325MB and you need to increase your email quota limit because in  less than 48 hours your email will be disable.  To increase your email quota limit to 2.2GB, , you must reply to this email immediately and enter your account details below.
  • We regret to inform you that all PayPal Manager accounts are LOCKED.  Please download the file attached to this e-mail and follow the steps to re-activate it.

Help fight phishing by educating yourself to recognize these email scams and never responding to any request for your login and or password by email or phone.  Visit http://it.cofc.edu/security/phishing/ to learn more.