Friday, August 22, 2008
by: John Fernandes

Summary: An external e-mail was sent to the University Community with the subject "Verify and Update Your Seton Hall University E-mail" to "Seton Hall University " <jawadjames@hotmail.com>".  The e-mail begins with "Dear Seton Hall University Users".   This e-mail requests your first name, last name, username and password. If you received this or any other e-mail similar to this, do not open or reply to the message - delete this message. If the e-mail contains a web address, do NOT attempt to click on the address. If the e-mail contains an attachment, do not open the attachment. It is a phishing scam, that is, an attempt to trick you in to revealing your personal or account information to unauthorized third parties.

To the Seton Hall Community:

Recently, several members of the University community received e-mails that were presumably sent by Seton Hall University, regarding closing of your webmail account. The subject of this e-mail states "Verify and Update Your Seton Hall University E-mail". The e-mail asks you to provide your username, password, date of birth and location information, in order to prevent the closing of your SHU webmail account. The response e-mail address is "Seton Hall University " <jawadjames@hotmail.com>". Do NOT reply to the message. Delete the message. It is a fraudulent phishing scam requesting identity information. It is a phishing scam and was not authorized or sent by Seton Hall University. Seton Hall University and other reputable institutions (financial or commercial) never ask customers for their passwords or personally identifiable information like Date of Birth (DOB) in a bulk ("Dear Account Owner") e-mail.

Phishing e-mails are scams initiated by unauthorized third parties to steal personal account information. Please disregard phishing e-mail messages, do not reply with confidential information or open any attached files or click on links provided in the message.

"Phishing" is defined as a high-tech scam that uses spam or pop-up messages to deceive you into disclosing your credit card numbers, bank account information, Social Security number, passwords, or other sensitive information.

For more information about phishing, determine if a message is a phishing attempt or not and how to protect yourself from such internet scams please read this attachment. 

If you are uncertain if an email you have received is a message of this type of scam please contact the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222 (on campus ext. 2222) or via e-mail at helpdesk@shu.edu. When contacting the Help Desk via email please forward the suspected email along with your request for assistance so that we may ascertain for you if in fact the message is legitimate or a "phishing" scam.

Technology Help Desk
Seton Hall University
helpdesk@shu.edu
 

For more information please contact:
Help Desk
(973) 275-2222
helpdesk@shu.edu