Phishing, compromised account and SPAM

[Rob Tanner <rtanner () LINFIELD EDU>]

Hi,

We are seeing an increase in phishing expeditions as well as a more significant increase in those who fall for them and 
give their password away.  We’ve tried everything we can think of to educate faculty and staff to the fact that ITS 
never, ever asked them to revalidate their account by entering their username and password.  But it still continues to 
happen and it looks like what folks are after is an account they can send SPAM through.  If it’s in the middle of a 
week-day we catch it pretty early , but evenings and especially week-ends, thousands of email messages with between 40 
and 50 recipients each are sent out before we can kill it.  So, we are constantly getting on blacklists.

I can’t imagine that Linfield College is alone in this situation.  What are others doing to mitigate the consequences 
or better yet, prevent from occurring in the first place.

Thanks.



Rob Tanner
UNIX Services Manager
Linfield College, McMinnville Oregon

ITS will never ask you for your password.  Please don’t share yours with anyone!