Computer Fraud

Luther Seminary Computer Services personnel will never ask for sensitive information by email.

Phishing

Phishing is defined as the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, or credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. It is not advisable to reply to email messages that ask you for such information.

If you receive an email in your Luther account, helpdesk personnel may be interested. However, helpdesk@luthersem.edu can only act upon the issue if you forward the message header of the phishing email.

To forward the phishing attempt message header

Other email systems may automatically display full message headers and most have the option to do so. In Outlook 2007, to copy and paste the header information:

• Close the message in question
• In the list of messages, locate the phishing attempt message, but do not open it
• Right click the subject
• Choose Message Options (A dialog box opens.)
• Click anywhere in the text area of Internet Headers at the bottom of that screen
• Press Ctrl+A to select all of the text (The text will now be highlighted.)
• Press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to the clipboard (Nothing visible happens, this is normal.)
• Close that dialog box to return to the list of messages
• Right click that message subject again and choose Forward
• Put in helpdesk@luthersem.edu as the message recipient
• Click at the top of the message body and press Ctrl+V (to paste the header information)
• Send the message

Thank you. Helpdesk may be able to block other phishing attempts based on the header information you sent.