The mail.nitt.edu Phishing mail

I have been using Google Mail (aka Gmail) all this time and i have not been stumped by any spam/phishing email more than this one. The reason being, the mail that i received had in it the sender’s name in bold “mail.nitt.edu” – which is the mail portal of the university where i study. Although it was evident after careful perusal that it was a spam, it would have proven  fatal if i had replied to it in haste!

Now, if you face a similar threat – not being able to decide if a mail is spam or not – feel free to follow these steps which will help you to spot the bad-ass phishing mails.

Spam inbox view in gmail

Even though the mail was categorized as “SPAM” by gmail automatically, the mail subject was curious enough make someone open it. But the point to be noted here is that any mail subject which has the URL of the service instead of the service name may be potential spam. Because legitimate emails from the service admins would surely have the service names like “Twitter” or “Facebook” or “Orkut” instead of their url’s viz. “twitter.com” , “facebook.com”, “orkut.com”. Likewise, it would have been more cogent if it was “Dear NITTmail Account user” instead of “Dear mail.nitt.edu Account User”

Spot the sender using the show details option

So, what if you don’t use gmail? Here are some more ways you can identify bogus mailers

The phishing mail }:-)

Give aways the its a spam

• Note that the sender’s mail address is not from the “nitt.edu” domain
• The reply to points to a suspicious “techsupport” address
• The mail asks for the LOGIN NAME and the PASSWORD in reply! BUZZ! Never do the admins ask you for a password!

Any mail server can masquerade the sender’s name but not its address. That is why you can identify if a mail comes from a trusted source this way.

Some more preventive measures to check spam is to use the filters feature in Gmail. Just try these ten must have filters which featured in LifeHacker. One of the filters helps you to identify bulk emails that are not sent to you alone but to many others too. As spam mails are bound to be mailed in bulk, this helps you to mark them as “Not to me” (“f/! me” as shown in the screenshots).

Lastly, a word of caution to nitt junta: Just don’t be foolish (NITTmail admins never would have apologized for anything in any of their mails ). Stay safe

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