Email Phishing Attacks Increase During Holidays
Protect yourself from scam artists during the holidays
With an increasing number of scam solicitations as the holidays approach, Duke's Office of Information Technology and IT Security Office are warning the Duke community to think twice before following links in suspicious messages.
"While our anti-spam systems catch a large portion of these messages, some continue to slip through," said Richard Biever, Duke's chief information security officer.
This week, recent email messages have carried subject lines like:
- ACH transfer error
- ACH transaction failure notice
- Your Amazon.com order of "Omron <RANDOM NUMBER> Fat Loss ..." has shipped!
- Urgent notice about your electronic payments
Biever recommends these simple steps to protect against phishing scams:
- If you get an email message that looks suspicious, visit the Sophos site to upload the message, which will give Duke's anti-spam systems better information on what to mark as spam or a scam.
- You can get instructions for setting up a filter to send spam and phishing messages to th Junk mail folder from the Duke knowledgebase:
Biever also recommends keeping up to date on IT security issues by reading "Protect Yourself," the blog on the Duke University Information Security Office website, including the most recent post about email scams over the holiday season. The post includes a short quiz to test your knowledge of scam websites.