I'm forwarding a message of warning from our IT Systems Administrator, Suzanne Payne:
The College is once again being inundated with "phishing" emails: these are
emails claiming to be from IT Services asking for your username and
password.
Unfortunately some users in Goldsmiths are still replying to these emails.
Once the phishers have your username and password, they use our mail
servers to send hundreds of thousands of spams, which causes Goldsmiths to
be blacklisted by places like Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL.
At this time of year it is very important that Goldsmiths can communicate
properly with prospective students who may have email addresses with Yahoo, Hotmail and AOL. Once we are blacklisted, ALL emails sent from Goldsmiths to these addresses are either stopped completely or delayed by many hours, and automatically marked as spam so that even if they get there, they are immediately filtered into the user's spam folder. Sadly, most users automatically delete the contents of their spam folder without ever looking at what is in there, and so Goldsmiths communications with them are lost.
Goldsmiths IT Services will NEVER ask you for your password via email. We
do not need your password to manage your account. We do not ask people to re-confirm their credentials in order to retain their account. Your
account is retained automatically for as long as you are a member of the
College.
Please, just delete any email which asks you to reply with your username
and password.
For some samples of phishing emails sent to the College, and further
information about them, look at: <http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/it/phishing.php>