CLEVELAND, Ohio – The University of Akron warned people using its email service Monday not to click on an email alerting them that their inbox is too full and is bouncing incoming mail.
The email appears to be a phishing scam meant to infiltrate the university’s computer network or get people to reveal their passwords.
Thwarting phishing scams often means keeping people from clicking the infected links, but that’s a tough task. McAfee, the computer security company, said in a report last month that 80 percent of the 16,000 business users who took its online phishing quiz failed to spot at least one of the seven phishing emails.
And a click on a phishing email is like unprotected sex: It just takes once to get in trouble.
According to the university’s (real) alert, the subject line on the message reads “Dear Email Account User” and says in the body:
“The assigned storage limit of your mailbox has exceeded due to the high rate of spam/junk mails, and incoming mails are currently being rejected. For re-validation, click the below link and fill the form to increase your quota limit.”
The University of Akron said in an alert to users that it didn’t generate the storage-limit email and doesn’t know who did. Other schools may want to be on guard for similar email ploys.
The malware-infected link can build themselves into bots that steal passwords or infiltrate systems or lead users to spoof sites intended to get them to input passwords.
Phishing scams typically include a warning meant to goad the recipient into clicking on a link.
Another one going around: One in which someone tells you they’ve sent you a link to an “important” but unspecified document.
For more information on spotting them, visit www.cleveland.com/scamfinder.
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