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| Don’t click! |
Another reminder that when you get emails – such as the one above – that seem to have some official connection to UCLA and invite you to click here, download here, etc., be very cautious. The one above may just be harmless commercial spam but the best thing to do is to delete it. It clearly is not from a UCLA source. Clicking and downloading may infect your computer and cause damage to it.
From time to time, we have provided reminders about email problems. One problem – which we have noted – is that at a public university, your emails may be subject to public documents requests. Another problem is that hackers may try to get into your email account through “phishing,” probably to use it to send out scam messages to your contacts. Such an event seems to have occurred at UC-Davis: Hackers compromised the email accounts of three UC Davis doctors last month, potentially gaining access to personal or medical information on as many as 1,800 patients, the university announced Monday… …
Yours truly received the email below today, ostensibly from UCLA. Did you get it? If so, you might have noticed that it doesn’t come from a UCLA address. Best advice: Don’t click! Instead, delete.=========================== important Notice For UCLA Faculty and staff of our email database(University of California, Los Angeles UCLA)We currently updated our UCLA email database.IT Help Desk requires all our faculty and staff (University of California, Los Angeles), to confirm their email account or sending and receiving emails will be difficult. For full access of your email account, follow the reference link bellow to confirm your email account.UCLA FACULTY AND STAFF…
From time to time, yours truly receives email messages – particularly from people with Yahoo or gmail accounts – that result from someone guessing their passwords. The culprit then concocts a story about being stranded in Outer Slobovia and needing money. If you get one of these messages, don’t send money and do let the account holder know his/her account has been hacked. The moral is to have a password that is hard to guess. But then comes this word: Steven M. Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia, uncovered a startling fact. The launch code for all U.S. Minuteman…
From time to time, yours truly receives emails -seemingly from a friend or colleague – requesting money to get out of a distressful situation abroad. Today was no exception: I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about our trip, because it was impromptu. we had to be in Philippines for Tour..The program was successful, but our journey has turned sour. we misplaced our wallet and cell phone on our way back to the hotel we lodge in after we went for sight seeing. The wallet contained all the valuables we had. Now, our passport is…
Authorities locally and nationwide are cautioning Internet users of a new trend in computer viruses known as “ransomware,” which take control of victims’ computers and demand a ransom to restore the users’ data. They have different names, such as Reveton or Crypto Locker, and they attempt to extort money from victims by encrypting or blocking access to their data without their knowledge, then demanding a ransom in order to undo the damage, according to police and FBI officials… In August, the FBI issued a similar warning regarding a ransomware virus known as “Reveton,” which scams victims by purporting to be…
We have cautioned on this blog about responding to emails that purport to come from university sources but may actually be email spam or worse. Yours truly – and probably many other UCLA faculty – received the email in italics below. I was cautious because it did not come from a UCLA or UC source. It came frommember@surveymonkey.com and had a reply address of survey@acrd.us. After a little snooping and Googling, however, it appears to be legit. ============================ Dear University of California Colleague,The UC Office of the President funded researchers at UC Merced to conduct a system-wide survey of community…
