June 3, 2008
UA e-mail account holders have recently been targeted with waves of fraudulent e-mails. These e-mails, which claim to be from the "Arizona.edu Team" or "Customer Service," request account holders to share their username and password with the sender, often threatening to deactivate or delete e-mail accounts if the recipient doesn't reply quickly. Some of the e-mail messages are blatantly fraudulent, while others are more subtle and convincing, but all have been very effective in harvesting Internet IDs and passwords. One link has been known to take you to a login page that is very similar in appearance to the UA WebAuth login page.
These messages are not from the University of Arizona. UA will NEVER ask you to provide personal information, such as passwords, by e-mail.
We recommend that, if you receive an unsolicited e-mail or you are unsure of the sender, you do not reply, do not click any links contained within it, and do not open any attached files. Those actions have been known to infect computers.
If you receive an e-mail that claims to be from the University and asks for your Internet ID and password, forward it, with all headers and the entire message, to abuse@email.arizona.edu. (Find instructions for expanding headers at www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html.) Fraudulent e-mail claiming to be send by outside agencies (PayPal, Wells Fargo or Arizona State Credit Union, for example) should be reported directly to the company.
See http://security.arizona.edu/phishing for additional information and advice about these kinds of attacks.
Please be aware that UA requires all users to reset their NetID passwords at least once a year, and UITS sends e-mail reminders requesting that users reset their own passwords. If you need to change or reset your password but are concerned about the authenticity of the e-mail message, you can always change your password safely by opening a new web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox) and navigating to http://netid.arizona.edu or by calling 621-HELP or 626-TECH.
Posted June 3, 2008 09:07 AM
