Identity theft and other fraudulent activity remain concerns for Bank of America customers at the University following a recent increase in fraudulent e-mails.
The University Police Department and Information Technology and Communication both relayed information about the proliferation of e-mails claiming to be from Bank of America earlier in the week. In the e-mails, the customer is asked to forward his social security number and other personal information to the seemingly legitimate solicitor.
According to Bank of America spokesperson Diane Wagner, there is never a circumstance in which the bank would gather sensitive personal information via e-mail. She identified this criminal practice of online deception and possible identity theft as "phishing." E-mails claiming to be from legitimate sources such as banks are only one of the ways by which "phishers" can gain access to private information.
Though Bank of America is both the University's official bank and preferred lender, ITC officials do not think this recent string of activity is being directed at University e-mail accounts for this reason.
"We do get certain targeted 'phishing' scams," said Shirley Payne, ITC director of security coordination and policy. "People at the University will often get 'phishing' scams specifically targeting people in the area who are likely to use the U.Va. Credit Union. For Bank of America, it may not be targeted at all. What may be targeted is knowing that school is just getting started and that might cause some 'phishers' to see an opportunity to do something like this."
This week alone, the University Police Department received 14 individual complaints from students who submitted personal information solicited by these fraudulent e-mails, Lieut. Melissa Fielding said. She added that the department has been working with state and federal authorities to help identify the originating location of this online scam. Together with Bank of America, the department is compiling a report to help track down the responsible "phishers."
As of November 2006, ITC offers all accounts on the Central Mail Service a default spam filter. Suspicious e-mails are then forwarded to a separate folder for personal review. Users can set the filter to whatever tolerance they deem necessary. A low tolerance will result in more filtered spam into the folder, while a high tolerance will result in more spam entering the regular inbox.
Since complaints about fraudulent Bank of America e-mails surfaced last April, ITC has upgraded the University's spam filter, according to Payne. These upgrades, however, are subject to users selecting a lower tolerance for suspicious e-mails.
"I have been seeing the Bank of America e-mails coming to me, but those were captured by my spam filter," Payne said. "Obviously a lot of people are getting them. It makes me wonder if they aren't taking advantage of the [spam filtering] feature. Maybe they're taking advantage of it, but they have set their tolerance level for spam at a higher level."
With the planned migration of student e-mail accounts to either Gmail or Microsoft Live by the end of the semester, "phishing" scams such as this may become less of a problem for students. Both vendors have a strong reputation for fighting spam, according to Payne.
"One of the reasons why the Google and Microsoft offerings were considered is because they have good spam filtering," Payne said.
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