Fraudulent E-mail

Please be aware of any e-mail messages you receive that ask you to divulge personal or financial information.  There are a number of e-mails in circulation that purport to be from legitimate businesses (for example, PayPal, various banks or financial institutions, amazon.com, internet service providers, etc.).  These e-mail messages look authentic and usually ask you to update password information, credit card information or other account information.  They include a link to what appears to be a legitimate web page, but is actually a web page designed to intercept information you provide.

You should never provide any information in response to such e-mails.  Legitimate businesses do not operate by sending you e-mail messages and asking you to provide information via a link provided in the message.  If you believe the request may be legitimate, either contact the customer service department of the business or visit the web page of  the business by typing in the URL of the business's web page directly into your browser.

CNS installed spam filtering software in the beginning of May (see CNS news webpage ) which, if you enable, will catch and quarantine many of  these e-mail scams.  If you have not enabled spam filtering, we encourage you to do so.  Instructions may be found at http://depts.drew.edu/cns/enterprise/email/spam/

If you would like more information about e-mail scams, a recent article appearing in NetworkWorld may be helpful:
http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2004/0531phishing.html