Protecting your personal information
As you know, spam and phishing messages are a rampant problem no matter what email program or network you use. To avoid becoming a victim of these illegal activities, we recommend that you keep these security habits in mind:
- Never reply to—or click
on—links in messages that ask for
your password or other personal account
information. These messages are all
attempts to gather your personal
information for illegal activities (aka
phishing).
- Links in messages often point to
fake sites (that look like a real log
in page) or are attempts to hack your
computer. If you click a link in a
message, confirm the URL is for the
authentic site before entering
passwords or other account
information.
- Remove Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
file-sharing programs. These programs
are designed to share as much of your
computer's contents as possible. Even
if you don't download anything at UD,
you could be cited for copyright
infringement by the artists or their
agents.
- Do not click on pop-up banners or menus that appear if you have not requested anything from the site that is being advertised. Again, these are most likely fake leads to gather your personal information, hack your computer, or infect your computer with a virus or malware.