Desktop Folders vs. Desktop Shortcuts to Folders

We have seen a few cases where users have icons on their desktop that they believe are shortcuts to network drives, when in fact they’re not shortcuts at all – they are completely separate folders sitting on their desktop. This can be incredibly bad if you are part of a group of people editing documents in a particular network folder. Your edits will be completely separate from the network folder. Only you will be able to see those edits, and in the worst cases, there will be two different working copies of the same document.

Please ensure that the icons on your desktop are shortcuts and not separate folders. You can tell just by looking at them:
Shortcuts have the little arrow in the lower-left corner of the icon, as in the icon above on the left. The icon on the right is for an actual folder sitting on the desktop…notice no arrow.

Spoof Email

Sometimes spammers will send spoof emails that appear to come from our Information Services office. You may receive an email with a message such as:

• “You have successfully updated the password of your Necc account. If you did not authorize this change or if you need assistance with your account, please contact customer service at: ___@_____”
• “Dear Member, Your e-mail account was used to send a huge amount of unsolicited spam messages during the recent week. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and confirm the attached document so you will not run into any future problems with the online service. If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to cancel your membership.”
• “Subject: Email Account Suspension Please confirm the attached document!”

These are all spoof emails. Here are some clues that should make it obvious to you when you receive a spoof email:

1. We don't send emails from an administrator account. We only email from our personal email accounts.
2. We never refer to ourselves as "The Support Team".
3. The email probably tells you to open an attached file (which was stripped away by our eSafe server). This is a trick to get you to open a file that almost always contains a virus/worm/trojan horse.
4. The email may also tell you to click on a link to a website to "verify" or "update" personal or password information. Never, ever submit personal information to a website unless you know for certain that the website is from a trusted source.
5. They spoofed an anti-virus message: "Attachment - No Virus found". Never trust this -- always run antivirus scans yourself if you're unsure if an email attachment is genuine.