2/21/2012: Beware of UCLA-targeted phishing attacks
Please remember that no legitimate e-mails will ever ask that you "confirm your account" by responding with your login credentials. The term for this type of message is "phishing", which you may have already encountered with your bank accounts, PayPal accounts, other e-mail accounts, etc. The following are a few examples of recent phishing e-mails that you may have received:
Sample #1
This e-mail has been sent to you by UCLA Abuse Team to inform you that your account will be deactivated within the next 24 hours due to several unsuccessful login attempts on it from a foreign ip. If you fail to comply with this notice, we are sorry to inform you that you account will be terminated due to the fact that it might cause a critical harm to our UCLA web server database administration system.
To prevent this to happen please click/copy the link below into your web-browser and confirm your information:
http://tinyurl.com/
If you have already confirmed your information then please re-confirm this message again. Thanks for your co-operation.
Sign,
© 2006 The Regents of the University of California
Sample #2
This message is from the helpdesk support center. Be informed that your mail box has exceeded the storage limit set by your administrator/database, you are currently running out of context and you may not be able to send or receive some new mail until you re-validate your mailbox. To prevent your email account from been closed, re-validate your mailbox below to enable us increase the storage limit:
User Name:
Password:
Your account shall remain active after you have successfully confirmed your account details.Thank you for your swift response to this notification we apologize for any inconvenience. We appreciate your continued help and support.
Regards,
Helpdesk Support Center
Once again, please remember that no one from BOL will ever ask you for your password in person, over the telephone, or via e-mail. If you ever receive one of these messages, please IGNORE and DELETE it. If you or anyone you know responded to a phishing e-mail by mistake, please IMMEDIATELY change your password and security question at:
If you have any questions please contact the BOL Help Desk at (310) 267-4357 or at consult@ucla.edu.