Students and faculty were treated to something very different outside Crosby on Tuesday, April 23. From 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., a student employee, Catherine Hildebrand, dressed as a clownfish and asked passers-by for personal information, such as social security numbers and passwords.
Why, you may ask?
GU’s IT department decided to make a play on words and use the image of the fish to warn people about the dangers of phishing.
“We’ve seen a problem with phishing scams on campus throughout the academic year,” explained Cassandra Marrs, GU’s IT policy communication and software training specialist.
GU Information Technology Services (ITS) has been notified of a significant number of email scams this year. Tom Buck, senior system administrator, explained that phishing is a problem, especially when students or faculty access the Barney server on campus and send email.
“An enterprising hacker would know how to get on Barney and send out mail,” Buck said.
To attract people’s attention to this problem, Marrs said ITS decided to try another approach, a visual, educational aid.
“I got this idea when I was at a conference a couple months ago,” Marrs said. “Another school had done it and had really great success, so we just decided to give it a shot and see if worked for us.”
Marrs said that the play on the word “phishing” is meant to be a funny and visual reminder to validate your sources when you are online.
“The idea is she would ask people for social security numbers or passwords or birthdates, and of course those people won’t give that information to a stranger, especially not a stranger in a clownfish costume,” she said. “But the idea is that if you were going to give it to somebody face to face, you really shouldn’t be giving it to people over the Internet that you can’t see and have no idea who they are.”
Senior Kindra Johnson was inundated with spam email after she posted an ad for roommates on GU’s off-campus housing site.
“I got a few emails that were just worded strangely,” she said. “They were from yahoo.com and gmail.com. They would say they were from Australia, England, or Canada, but they would write really weird and they would just have terrible grammar and use weird lingo.”
Johnson said the vagueness of the emails, and the fact that the sender didn’t seem to care about details such as the start of the lease or the rent amount, made her question their validity. She added that people in those emails were often “overly anxious” about sending her checks.
“When I was suspicious, I would write back asking for more information about the person, their major, and what school they attend,” she said.
After using Google to research one name, Tomaz, Johnson found a technology blog post in which the author described that exact hacker.
“After I read that, I emailed Gonzaga’s IT department,” Johnson said. “I clearly explained the situation, and I suggested putting password protection for accessing the ads posted on the Gonzaga off-campus housing list.” She said that the IT department wrote back, saying they would send her email to the housing office, and that was the last she heard from them.
Marrs said that firewalls and spam filters are put in place for zagmail, so that a large portion of spam is prevented from getting to people. However, if the firewall is too strong, important emails could be kept from being delivered to students and faculty, and so some spam does get through.
Buck noted that students are typically better at discerning suspicious email than others on campus because their generation is so technology-savvy.
At the phishing event, students and faculty were reminded to watch for those types of emails by Hildebrand, as she asked for personal data, and then handed them informational cards.
“(Hildebrand) is going to give out little cards (in front of Crosby),” Marrs said. The front of the cards read “Phishing: don’t get hooked”, and on the back is a code for people to scan that will lead them to a website that explains phishing and gives examples of phishing scams.
This was the first of what Marrs said will be a series of clownfish appearances. She said they are planning on repeating this event once or twice a week for the rest of the semester. The clownfish will appear at different locations.