Emails and safety

Hackers often use emails to distribute their viruses and it is therefore necessary to always keep these two rules in mind when handling emails:

1. NEVER give away your password:

Once in a while emails skip through our filters that are fishing for your password. Those emails often seem to come from an organization inside the University like IT-Help-Desk. The content of these messages are built in a way to make you think that you need to sign into attached pages, and thereby give up your password. They try to trick you by saying:

  • Your mailbox is about to close because storage is getting full or you are not using it enough
  • Your network connection will be terminated for some reason
  • Your personal storage space is getting full and will be closed

The principle is really simple. NEVER type in your password on pages you don’t recognize and NEVER send your password by email. If in doubt contact IT-Help-Desk directly before you proceed.

2. Attachments and links:

When you receive email with an attachment you ought to consider the following:

  • Do not open attachments that you did not expect to get unless exploring it further
  • NEVER open attachments from unknown sender

If you receive an attachment you were not expecting from someone you know you should reply that email asking if they indeed did send you that attachment. It happens to often that hackers use email addresses you recognize to send you attachments in hope you will open them and thereby giving your computer a virus.