Tonight I received an e-mail from which appears to be from Penn State saying they are upgrading their database of PSU e-mail accounts. Hmmm, seems fishy, but it comes from a Penn State address - info@psu.edu - so it must be real, right? Uh, negative. Did you fall for this? Idiot!

First of all if this had come from Penn State I'm sure they would have redirected us to a Penn State Website to update any information rather than just sending a reply with our username, password and date of birth. The fact that they're asking for your password should have been enough of a tip-off.

Secondly, I think if it had really come from Penn State, there wouldn't have been any blatant grammar mistakes. "We are deleting all unused psu.edu email account ..." "To prevent your account from been suspended ..." You're been stupid if you actually fall for this, and probably deserve to get your e-mail hacked into now.

And thirdly, a quick google search of info@psu.edu finds a 2005 Collegian article about fraudulent e-mails coming from addresses like info@psu.edu, register@psu.edu, webmaster@psu.edu, admin@psu.edu, mail@psu.edu and support@psu.edu.

By the way, what ever happened to the "graylisting" system Penn State was implementing to stop things like this from getting through? I still get e-mails about my "bad potence" and trying to sell me "Herba1 to increase size." Wait, those are spam right? I don't really have a potence problem do I?

Apparently this also happened back in January to people at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. If you were unfortunate enough to fall for this you should probably change your password IMMEDIATELY! To do that go to www.work.psu.edu.

So have some common sense people. Don't fall for things like this. Unless some Nigerian prince needs you to wire him some money to get his fortune, because that one really seems worth it.