Ithaca College

With sophisticated (or not so) email scams continually being reported on campus, Public Safety and ITS would like to remind the campus community to be extremely cautious with regard to unsolicited email messages that offer business or investment opportunities or that ask for any kind of personal or financial information.

One of the more popular scams is the Nigerian-based "Advance Fee Fraud," which claims that you can earn a substantial sum of money in exchange for helping to transfer millions of dollars to a U.S. bank account. Another recent email scam claims that you have won a large amount of money in a foreign lottery. Yet another popular theme in scam emails is the request for personal, financial, or account information related to various banks or online services such as PayPal and eBay.

These email messages often have a very official appearance through the use of recognizable "from" addresses, look-alike corporate logos, and links to authentic-looking web pages.

An email message with any of the following characteristics should be treated as highly suspicious:

• Messages addressed to "Dear 'madam'," "sir," or "subscriber" instead of you personally are suspect. A legitimate company that you do business with will normally use your name in the salutation.
• Unsolicited messages requesting any kind of personal information are probably bogus. A legitimate company is very unlikely to request such information via email.
• Messages that are vague or cryptic but that include attachments, passwords, instructions, or links to web pages should be deleted unless you have specific, highly reliable information to the contrary.
• The use of all caps, spelling mistakes, or poor grammar is unlikely to come from a legitimate company.

If you receive an email that has even the slightest indication that it might not be legitimate, always err on the side of caution and either delete it or investigate further before replying or clicking on any links in the message. The "too good to be true" type messages should simply be deleted and ignored. Messages requesting personal information should be verified by contacting the company cited in the email via a telephone number or website address you know to be genuine (such as one shown on a billing statement).

The following websites are good sources for additional information about email scams and other Internet tips:

• OnGuardOnline
• Snopes.com
• Better Business Bureau

If you have any questions please contact the Helpdesk at helpdesk@ithaca.edu or 4-3282.