Phishing Alert

Phishing Alert Notification

It has been reported that people are receiving an emailed phishing scam. The subject usually says something like “Confirm Your Email Address ” and the body of the message is similar to that shown below. If you have received the email below, please know that (1) it is NOT from Biola IT and (2) it is very common for these email scams to be redistributed at a later date with only slightly different content, such as a different subject or return address.

Example of the phishing scam

Dear biola.edu Subscriber,
We would like to inform you that we are currently carrying out scheduled maintenance and upgrade of our webmail service and as a result our email client has been changed and your orignal password will be reset. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.
To complete your biola.edu email account, you must reply to this email immediately and enter your password here (*)
*
CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
E-mail Username : ……… …..
E-mail Password : ……………
Date of Birth : …………….
Country or Territory : ………
*
Failure to do this will immediately render your email address deactivated from our database.
You can also confirm your email address by logging into your biola.edu account at https://webmail.biola.edu/login/
Thank you for using biola.edu webmail !
Computing and Telecommunication Services Team ©2009.

Avoid phishing scams

Phishing scams are social engineering tools designed to induce panic in the reader. Be suspicious of any email message that asks you to enter or verify personal information through an email reply or through any web page other than biola.edu. Also, please avoid responding to email from unknown senders and clicking links in a message. When you recognize a phishing message in your Biola inbox, delete the email message from your inbox to avoid accidentally accessing it.

If you feel the message may be legitimate, contact the IT Helpdesk (x4740) to see if you really do need to take the action described in the email message. If you’d like you can also ask the IT Helpdesk how you can report the message as SPAM by sending us necessary information to update our filter.

Thanks for the opportunity to serve you.

Branden Kirk
Network Administrator, Network & Telecom Services

IT Helpdesk
Biola University
562-903-4740