Recently, University of Minnesota e-mail account holders have been targeted with waves of fraudulent e-mails. These e-mails, which claim to be from the "UMN Edu Team" or "Customer Service," ask account holders to share their username and password with the sender--usually threatening to deactivate e-mail accounts if people don't reply quickly.
These messages are not from the University of Minnesota. The U of M Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like to remind you that the U of M will NEVER ask you to provide personal information such as passwords over e-mail. In addition, if you receive an unsolicited e-mail or you are unsure of the sender, do not reply, do not click any links contained within it, and do not open any attached files. Doing so has been known to infect computers.
Some of the e-mail messages are blatantly fraudulent, while others are more subtle and convincing, but all have been very effective in harvesting Internet IDs and passwords. One link has been known to take you to a login page that is very similar in appearance to the University Web login page.
See http://safecomputing.umn.edu/safepractices/phishing.html for good information and advice about these kinds of attacks, and for tips about how to tell a phishing attack from a legitimate University message. Remember that the University will NEVER ask for your password in an e-mail. If you receive an e-mail that claims to be from the University and asks for your Internet ID and password, forward it (with all headers and the entire message) to abuse@umn.edu. Fraudulent e-mail claiming to come from outside agencies (for example, PayPal) should be directed reported to the company being phished.
Please be aware that the University of Minnesota does require that all users reset their Internet passwords at least once per year, and OIT sends out e-mail reminders requesting that users reset their own passwords. If you need to change or reset your password but are concerned about the authenticity of the e-mail message, you can always change your password safely by opening a new web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox) and navigating to www.umn.edu/myaccount or by calling 1-HELP (612-301-4357).