Ithaca College

With the start of the new year the offices of Information Technology and Public Safety want to remind you to please be very suspicious of messages requesting personal or financial account information. 

Even with the college’s transition to a new HR system, HR and IT will never ask you to provide private personal or financial account information such as bank account or routing numbers, social security numbers, passwords or similar information via email.  You should never click on a link provided in an email related to financial or account requests.  The new HR system should be accessed via the apps.ithaca.edu web page.  If you have a concern about the legitimacy of an email you may have received about payroll, time reporting or other changes to the HR system please contact Human Resources at 607-274-8000. 

In addition, be very suspicious of messages from external (non ithaca.edu) email addresses purporting to be from Ithaca College students, faculty, or staff. Since we implemented Duo, it has been harder for criminals to compromise our actual accounts, so they’ve increased their use of external accounts at Gmail and similar services to impersonate our faculty and staff.  

Examples include messages we’re all now familiar with, asking for a “Quick Favor” or offering a “Part Time Job,” but as people begin to recognize those, attackers will come up with new scams. The most recent example was a message to a staff member in HR, claiming to be an employee requesting a payroll direct deposit change. Anyone can sign up for a Gmail or similar account in anyone else’s name, so we cannot trust the name displayed. 

Our recommendation is that members of the IC community should take no actions or fill any requests that come in messages from student, faculty, or staff external (non ithaca.edu) email addresses, which are fundamentally unverifiable. If you receive such a message that you believe is likely legitimate, consider replying with the following: “Because we are not able to verify the identity of external accounts, we will need you to send this request from your Ithaca College email account.” 

If you are concerned about a particular email you have received, you can contact either of our offices.  Public Safety can be reached at any time at 607-274-3333, and the IT Service Desk can be reached during college business hours at 607-274-1000.  

We wish you all the best for a safe and healthy new year. 

Bill Kerry                        Dave Weil
Director                          Associate Vice President
Public Safety                  Information Technology
wkerry@ithaca.edu        dweil@ithaca.edu