What is Spamming?

Spamming is sending out mass amounts of unsolicited email.  Spamming using UNC email accounts is against UNC's Email Procedures and repeated instances by a user will result in cancellation of their account.     

Additional unacceptable uses include, but are not limited to:

• Using email for any purpose which violates federal or state laws.
• Using email for commercial purposes.
• Misrepresenting your identity or affiliation in email communication.
• Sending harassing, intimidating, abusive or offensive material.
• Using someone else's identity and password.
• Causing congestion on the network by such things as the propagation of "chain letters," broadcasting inappropriate messages to lists or individuals, or excessive use of the shared data store of the email post office.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is the act of attempting to fraudulently acquire sensitive
personal information such as passwords and credit card details via
deception by sending emails to potential victims that masquerade as
being from an official-looking entity like a Bank or Credit Card provider.

Some of the latest Phishing scams to hit UNC have been:
Bank of Oklahoma
Subjects like:
Customer Alerting Service: Account confirmation required.
Unlook your Online Banking account

MBNA Internet Banking
Subjects like:
Security Notice #291240 MBNA Internet Banking account Update Necesary!

You will notice the misspellings like "Unlook" or "Necesary" and these are
probably not because the spammers are stupid (which some may argue), they are usually purposely used to beat anti-spam filters looking for specific words. Eventually our SPAM filtering devices will tune to these new scams and block them, but spammers are continually updating their emails to temporarily beat filtering so it is up to the students to use common sense about the messages that do get through.

A few tips to keep you from getting burned by these schemes:

NEVER give out personal data unless the contact has been initiated by you
and do not trust any banking or financial requests for information from emails that solicit you for this no matter how legitimate they look.

ALWAYS make sure any online transactions involving your personal information or credit card information have a URL that begins with httpS - which means your data is traveling through a encrypted SSL tunnel over the internet and if it is  intercepted by sniffing or otherwise - the culprits will not be able to read the data and get your information.

Links to Phishing information:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011400021033.aspx

http://www.antiphishing.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

From CU Boulder:
http://www.colorado.edu/its/news/archive/july2004/phishing7.22.04.html 

Page Last Update:  08/31/2005