Friday, Nov. 20, 2009
According to HFM BOCES Computer Services Coordinator David
Patterson, several HFM BOCES employees have reported
receiving the e-mail posted below, or one similar to it,
that requests the recipient to reply with their e-mail
account ID and password.
DO NOT RESPOND TO SUCH AN E-MAIL! JUST DELETE IT. IT IS A
phishing ATTEMPT TO STEAL YOUR E-MAIL ACCOUNT
USERNAME AND PASSWORD.
Mr. Patterson indicates that if you have received such an
e-mail and responded to it, your e-mail account may have
been compromised, allowing some unknown person to log-on to
your e-mail account or to attack the HFM BOCES mail server
and hijack it for the purpose of sending spam.
If you have responded to such an e-mail, take the following
action:
•
Change your email password. Contact Computer Services at
736-4394 or via
ITDirect (http://www.myschoolbuilding.com)
if you need help doing this.
•
Let HFM BOCES Computer Services know if your account may
have been compromised so we can check server logs for
possible misuse of your account to send spam from our
server.
When Phish stink
Following are some observations to help you distinguish
between fraudulent phishing e-mails and legitimate e-mails:
•
In the bogus e-mail below, notice that the "From" address is
"@jetli.org.cn" rather than "hfmboces.org." This is a huge
red flag. However, it is easy to falsify the "From" address
in an e-mail, so even if the address appears to be a
legitimate source, it may not have really come from that
address.
•
The "To" address in the bogus e-mail is "Helpdesk@update.com,"
again not an address likely to have been used for
distribution to HFM BOCES employees.
•
The reply address that the bogus e-mail wants information
sent to is "@gmail.com," not a legitimate corporate address.
Never give anyone your password
HFM BOCES Computer Services, and any other legitimate
business, would never ask users for e-mail usernames and
passwords. Doing so is not secure, plus could be too easily
mistaken for phishing attempts such as this.
You should never give your passwords to anyone else, even
someone claiming to be from HFM BOCES Computer Services. If
it is absolutely necessary to gain access to your account
for some administrative purpose, we have the ability to
change your password, and you would be made aware that we
had accessed your account.
If you have an questions or problems, contact:
David Patterson
Computer Services Coordinator
HFM BOCES
(518)736-4393
dpatterson@hfmboces.org
