How to Know it is a Phishing Email

Email messages sent by members of the IT Help Desk will always be signed with their name, as opposed to using a generic signature such as "THE UCMERCED HELP DESK" or "ucmerced.edu user support team."

Members from the IT Help Desk will never ask you for your password, your password should always be kept secure.

Phishing Examples

Below are some examples of phishing email messages. In these cases they are mimicking the IT Help Desk.

Example 1

Subject: Please Verify Your Email Address
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:02:58 -0600 (CST)
From: UCMERCED HELP DESK helpdesk@ucmerced.edu
Reply-To: helpdesk443@gmail.com
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

Dear ucmerced.edu Webmail User,

To complete your ucmerced.edu webmail account, you must reply to this email immediately and enter your UCMNet ID (**********) and Password(**********)

Failure to do this will immediately render your email address deactivated from our database.

You can also confirm your email address by logging into your ucmerced.edu webmail account at http://mail.ucmerced.edu/

We apologise for any inconveniences, but trust you understand that our primary concern is for our customers to be totally secure.

THANK YOU FOR USING ucmerced.edu!

THE UCMERCED HELP DESK.

Example 2

Subject: Hi
Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:05:44 -0400
From: noreply@ucmerced.edu
To: idm@ucmerced.edu

Dear user idm@ucmerced.edu,

We have found that your account was used to send a large amount of spam during this week.

We suspect that your computer was compromised and now runs a trojan proxy server.

Please follow instructions in order to keep your computer safe.

Have a nice day,

ucmerced.edu user support team.


This email also contained a zipped attachment which potentially could have contained a virus or worm.


Looking for help?

We offer a number of tutorials and FAQs available in the Guides & FAQs section.

If you have any questions, problems, or comments, please contact the IT Help Desk via email at helpdesk@ucmerced.edu, via phone at 209.228.HELP (4357), or visit them in the Classroom and Office Building room 132A.