SPAM
What is spam?
When not referring to the tasty potted meat product, spam is unsolicited junk email sent indiscriminately in bulk, often for commercial purposes. Much of it is sent by botnets, networks of virus-infected computers, complicating the process of tracking down the spammers. According to various estimates, about 80% of all email in the world may be spam.
What is "phishing?"
Phishing is the practice of defrauding users into giving up their usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information. Phishing emails will often try to get you to click on links that take you to fake websites; they often pretend to be from organizations such as a bank, PayPal, Amazon or even Stanford. Recent Stanford-targeting phishing scams have been improving their disguises—but always be cautious. Stanford will never ask you for your SUID password, and you should never give it out, not even to tech support!
Some ways to tell if an email might be phishing spam:
- Poor spelling and odd grammar
- The TO, FROM or REPLY-TO is not a Stanford address (or not from the company the email claims to be from)
- The email says it's from a company you've never heard of or never done business with
- The email asks for a password or other personal information (Stanford will NEVER ask for that information, nor will organizations such as your bank)
- A URL contains a suspicious misspelling (recent Stanford-targeted phishing scams pointed to "weblogiin" with 2 'i's)
- Holding the mouse over a URL (but don't click!) reveals a different target than the text of the URL reads
Why am I getting spam from myself?
Spammers are adept at forging the origin of their messages, and it is relatively easy to forge the "FROM" address on an email, just as it would be easy to write anyone's return address on an envelope. If you get a message that claims to be from you, it might be spoofing rather than originating from your email account; it doesn't necessarily mean you've been hacked.
Because of a forged "FROM" address, you might also be getting bounced-email notifications about emails you never sent. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean a hacker has real access to your account, just that a spammer was hiding behind your email address.
On the other hand, cracking passwords for free email sites (Hotmail, etc), or other sites with weak security, is an easy in for hackers. Now might be a good time to change your password — be sure to pick a strong password for all your email accounts, and remember: your SUNetID password should be different than every other password you have.
What should I do about spam?
If an email is obviously spam (pills, replica watches or enhancements, anyone?), or probably spam (from unknown companies or people trying to get you to reply or click on a link) you should just delete it. If there's a lot of spam landing in your inbox, ITS has some tips on fighting spam.
If an email seems suspicious, especially if it pretends to be from Stanford, from your financial institution, or from someone you know, you can check the IRT Security blog; we're trying to post all phishing and fraud alerts as they appear, to help you identify them. If the email seems to be from someone you know, check with that person before responding to the message. And if you're still not sure, you can always send it to IRT Security (irt-security@lists.stanford.edu) for confirmation. You should then delete any phishing emails from your inbox.
- Remember:
- NEVER CLICK ON LINKS in unsolicited email.
- NEVER DOWNLOAD FILES from suspicious email.
- NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR PASSWORD to anyone.
- When in doubt, DON'T.