Monday, July 28, 2008

Email Scam?

I just got this. Seems like this warning about an email scam is, in fact, an obvious email scam itself. Does anyone have official information to confirm:

Dear GWU Users.

The reason for this message is because of the Email Scams & Phishing going on the GWU Network. We have decided to contact all our students and staffs toprovide their password so that we can confirm the active users and to de-activate the inactive user. We regret the inconveniences this might have cost you. Please provide us with the below details.

Username:
Password:

With the above details we can verify active cmail.gwu.edu account.

Copyright © 2008, The George Washington University.
All rights reserved.2121 Eye Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20052 Phone: (202)
994-4949
----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Then, very sneakily, this was on the bottom...seemingly generated by my email, but actually part of the email sent:

--
This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner, and isbelieved to be clean.

Who sent this email? Hmm...

from ithelp@gwu.edu <ithelp@gwu.edu>
reply-to paulj101@yahoo.com
to undisclosed-recipientsdate
Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:27 PM
subject Update Your GWU E-mail
Account
mailed-by gwu.edu

Who is paulj101@yahoo.com? Google says nobody. But, a Google search for paulj101 yields a hotmail account and some weird stuff. Ok, I did my fair share of research. Who's got other facts?

UPDATE (July 29, 10:24am): Commenter mit429 points out that on July 7, ISS sent the following:
WARNING: EmailAlert!

This is the third reminder in 30 days about email security. Please remember
that you should NEVER reply to email messages asking for personal information,
even if it is security related. Regardless of how official the email looks, no
such message will EVER come from GW or the ISS help desk asking users to reply
with information such as log-in, password, birth date, social security number,
etc.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ISS Help Desk at
202-994-5530. The Help Desk is open Monday through Friday from 7 am to 7 pm.

7 comments:

James said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James said...

Definitely a scam - I didn't get it, and it'd be weird for a campuswide email to not get sent to everybody.

Plus, our friend Paul was pointed out as the address for another phishing scam here

Anonymous said...

Does Paul think the real GW copyrights its emails?

Megan said...

lol, that is absolutely hilarious. definitely a scam.

Unknown said...

As per the infomail sent on July 7th, ISS reminds that they will never ask for usernames or passwords.

The text of the e-mail follows:

WARNING: Email Scam Alert!

This is the third reminder in 30 days about email security. Please remember
that you should NEVER reply to email messages asking for personal information,
even if it is security related. Regardless of how official the email looks, no
such message will EVER come from GW or the ISS help desk asking users to reply
with information such as log-in, password, birth date, social security number,
etc.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ISS Help Desk at
202-994-5530. The Help Desk is open Monday through Friday from 7 am to 7 pm.

Anonymous said...

It's a scam. Remember, never respond to these emails. Here are many scams out there. You can read more here.

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