What is Phishing?

Phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other protected information. It can come in many shapes and sizes ranging from E-mail messages about your passwords expiring to fake letters from your bank getting you to verify your information. The key to beating phishing scams is being prepared and knowing what to look for.

What do you look for?

Phishing E-mails will sometimes contain logos and official sounding language to trick you into a false sense of security. But you must stop and ask yourself, why would any institution send an E-mail asking for sensitive account information. When in doubt always verify the source of the E-mail. You can contact the institution sending the E-mail for verification.

The following is an example of a phishing E-mail:

How does this affect you?

In Terms of Southern Miss, by responding to these E-mails you are hurting not only yourself, but everyone on campus. A response to one of these E-mails can cause USM.EDU addresses to be blocked by other Internet Service Providers. Your E-mail address can also be used to send out thousands of SPAM messages to your colleagues on campus.

Outside of Southern Miss, responding to a phishing E-mail asking for banking or credit card information can ruin a life you've worked years to build. Identity theft can can years to straighten out, and it never fully goes away.

What can be done?

If you think your account may have been compromised follow these steps.

1. Report it to the appropriate authorities.

• At Southern Miss, report the incident immediately to the iTech Help Desk at 266-HELP (4357).
• In the case of your personal accounts outside of the university, report it to the appropriate company immediately. The faster they are notified, the better that company will be able to protect you.
• Contact the company the e-mail was supposedly from and make them aware that someone is sending out fake e-mails in their name.
• For incidents outside the university, you can also report the scam to the Federal Trade Commission. The circumstances can be reported to the FTC: National Resource for Identity Theft. Users can also report phishing scams to the Anti-Phishing Working Group and to the FTC at spam@uce.gov

To report the scam to these groups: Create a new E-mail message addressed to them and attach the phishing e-mail to the new message. You can also copy the entire phishing e-mail and paste it in the new message.

2. Use the latest and most up-to-date virus protection.

• All University employees and students are allowed to download Symantec Antivirus free of charge. Visit the iTech Web Site at http://www.usm.edu/itech/softwarePurchase/index.php and choose your status. From there you will be give directions how to download your own copy of Symantec Antivirus.

3. Change all of your passwords.

• Start with passwords that are related to financial institutions or information.
• It is a good idea to change the passwords on all accounts just to be safe.

4. Always review your credit card and bank statements for unexplained charges or inquiries.