Identifying phishing / scam emails
Treating emails indicated as SPAM:
General spam complaints,especially when SPAM? is in the Subject:
There are several things you can do about spam. If any of the messages you’re getting have “SPAM?:#” in the subject line, you can set your spam filter to be more sensitive. Do that by going to:
Click on “Spam and virus settings” and then pick a Spam Probability Threshold of 50%. Those messages will no longer land in your inbox.
If you use an email program like Thunderbird or Apple Mail, you can train it to recognize spam better by clicking the Junk icon when you’re viewing a spam message.
You can also report any spam to Sophos, the company that develops the spam filtering software UVM uses. You can do that by forwarding spam, as an attachment if possible, to:
You can cc those reports to spam@uce.gov if there is anything illegal about the spam.
Phishing scams
UVM will never ask you for your password and you should never give your password to anyone who asks for it, whether it is in an email, by phone or on a non-uvm.edu web page. We at the Helpline and CDC do not have access to your password and cannot verify if you have it correctly; we can only facilitate you in resetting or changing it. Account Services (802 656 2006) are the people who can give you a temporary password, which you will then have to change as it will expire.
If you are certain that you have received a phishing scam for your UVM credentials, please forward the email to abuse@uvm.edu; this will help us protect other UVMers (to varying degrees). If you are uncertain, you can forward the email to helpline@uvm.edu, we will be able to identify and forward it on if it is a phishing email.
Never click on any of the links or reply to the email, this will only alert them to an active email address. If you or anyone else has already replied to, or clicked on the link in any such email; please advise them to change their UVM Network ID password immediately, using the secure online form at www.uvm.edu/account/, or criminals and hackers will have complete access to his confidential UVM information.
If you have any doubt as to the legitimacy of an email, please contact us first. However if you are certain that it is a scam, please forward them to phishing-report@us-cert.gov and is-spam@sophos.com. Forwarding them to those addresses will help in the detection and prosecution of phishing attacks. Please forward as an attachment or with full email headers if at all possible, this helps it the effectiveness of the response; more information about this can be found here: http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/istcontrib/Forwarding+Full+Mail+Headers
If you have an doubt please contact the Computing Help Line, at 656-2604, or forward the email with your questions to helpline@uvm.edu