Members of the Seton Hall community reported that they received phishing e-mails regarding storage limits from a source claiming to be from Seton Hall. Various reports were made about links popping up on computers asking for personal information in an email.
Information Technology Services have sent warnings to students and faculty about the scam and reaffirmed that Seton Hall would never ask users to give personal information through an email.
Phishing scams are designed to trick users into giving out information such as passwords, credit card numbers and social security numbers and these emails are a form of identity theft.
"Computers are not affected by a phishing scam, individuals are," said Director of the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center, Paul Fisher.
"When people receive an email asking for sensitive information or send the receiver to a Web site that looks legitimate the criminals capture the personal data that they asked for and depending on the data given in response to the email or on the scam website the criminals can access your e-mail and other accounts and assume your identity."
Seton Hall University is controlling the situation by providing various filtering devices that stop the spreading of phishing or spam emails in the students email accounts.
"The university has various filtering devices that discard over 98 percent of phishing and spam emails," Fisher said.
In order to avoid phishing scams, students should use precaution when opening emails that look unfamiliar, especially if it is asking for personal information.
"If the email asking for personal or account information is in your spam folder you can bet it is a phishing scam," Fisher said. "If the email uses language, titles or name that is not familiar to Seton Hall, you can bet it is a phishing scam."
Fisher added that "good practice is not to provide any personal or account information via email and if you question the legitimacy of the email, don't click or follow any of the links contained in it, instead open a new browser window and manually type in the SHU Web site and login to PirateNet as you normally would."
Paul Fisher advises students to seek help if they have been affected at Corrigan Hall in the Laptop Repair Center.
students may als call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2929.
Jacqueline DeBenedetto can be reached at
jacqueline.debenedetto@student.shu.edu.
