Open E-mail

News

Phishing E-mails - Don't Get Hooked!

Would you take the bait? (video)

What is Phishing?- Phishing is the practice of requesting confidential information over e-mail under false pretenses in order to obtain credit card numbers, passwords or other personal data.

The University community is often a target of these types of e-mail messages. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) reminds you that e-mail messages asking for your personal information are bogus. NEVER respond to an e-mail asking for your personal information. OIT and UW-Platteville would NEVER ask you for personal information by e-mail. DO NOT, under any circumstances, provide your username, password or birth date by e-mail. DELETE such fake messages immediately.

What happens if I do respond to a phishing e-mail?
Several things can happen and have happened to those responding to phishing e-mails with their UW-Platteville credentials.

• Your account is compromised, and the person can access your e-mail, PeopleSoft data, and other confidential data you may have access to.
• Your account may be used to send spam messages from uwplatt.edu domain, which can cause outside providers such as AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, etc. to blacklist any e-mail sent from a uwplatt.edu account.
• Spam e-mail being sent from your account causes the mail delivery queue to back up. Due to the high number of outgoing spam messages, valid e-mail from uwplatt.edu accounts is delayed.

You should never share your UW-Platteville credentials (NetID/password) with anyone. If you do respond to a phishing e-mail, once we learn your account is compromised, we will change your password immediately. This causes temporary loss of access to your account until you can be notified.

If you do respond to a phishing e-mail or have any questions contact the Help Desk or ResNet immediately.

Thank you.

Planned outages:

(These notices are additional or informational. Be aware of the normal system outage windows.)

• None at this time.