Awareness Campaign - Computer Security 101
Phishing
Phishing is fraudulent e-mail used by criminals to "bait" users into providing private information or clicking on bogus links. Some phishing e-mails are pretty easy to spot, such as the now well-known appeal for help from Nigerian royalty, or e-mails that are poorly written with misspelled words. However, the more sophisticated scams pose as legitimate businesses or services you may use (ex. Ebay, PayPal, your bank), asking for private personal information. These scams may look very professional, since the criminals use the same graphics as the real sites to fool users into trusting them.
A legitimate organization will never ask for private personal information in this manner. If you are ever in doubt about the source of an e-mail, just delete it.
Question 1. Phishing is:
| A | Rocking out to music by the band Phish. | |
| B | A fancy book-learnin’ way to spell “fishing,” a recreational sport that requires a fishing pole, bait and a body of water. | |
| C |  | A fraudulent e-mail designed to trick the receiver into providing valuable personal information, like a bank account number. |
| D | Something people do at fraternity parties. |
Never provide valuable personal information via email, especially in response to an email that requests the information.