Recognizing legitimate email from the HelpDesk
Tech-notices are important emails sent from the HelpDesk. All faculty, staff, and students at DePauw are sent tech-notices as a way of keeping you informed about important information from the IT department. Information that you may find vital to your academic planning, such as maintenance outages, upgrades, new technologies, virus alerts, and more.
Guidelines Information Services follows when sending emails
- We will always send email messages from an @depauw.edu address.
- We will always sign our official communications with the name, email address, and telephone number of an employee.
- Whenever we ask you to provide confidential or personal information, we will ask you to send that information to an @depauw.edu email address or through a secure DePauw website that will begin with https://www.depauw.edu/.
Reporting suspicious activity
Sometimes you can do everything right … and things still happen!
If your account has been compromised or you suspect suspicious activity, we recommend the following:
- If you have given out financial information, immediately make a report to DePauw Police at (765) 658-5555 or police@depauw.edu.
- Do not respond to the email or click on any links or attachments.
- Select the suspicious email in your mailbox, then click Report spam to remove it from your account and to report it to Google. When you do this, you may be given two options:
- Report spam. (Note: Choose this option – CHOOSE OPTION 1.)
- Unsubscribe and report spam – Do NOT choose this option.
- Change your DePauw Google Account password immediately if you replied to a suspicious email, clicked on a link, or opened an attachment. You can do this by following the step-by-step instructions at Change password: DePauw Google Account (email).
- Follow the recommendations at Securing devices anytime you receive a suspicious email.
- Run a virus scan as a further precaution if you have received a suspicious email. The Install antivirus software section of the Securing devices article is the place to go to learn how you can download and run Symantec Endpoint Protection on your computer. This software is free to all students, staff, and faculty at DePauw.
Secure browsing
The following tips will help ensure a more secure browsing environment:
- Use the most up-to-date version of your browser that you can and enable automatic updates.
- When using wireless, connect to DePauwSecure instead of DePauwGuest.
- To verify you are on a trusted or secure website, look for https:// in the location bar or a lock icon in the status bar.
- Do not use the Remember my password feature of your browser or the website you are visiting.
- Instead of clicking on unknown links, look up the website yourself to verify its legitimacy.
- Activate pop-up blockers.
- Routinely clear your history and cookies.
Suspended accounts
When unusual activity is noticed on your DePauw Google Account, it is temporarily suspended as a precaution to ensure the security of your account. If your phone number or personal email address is available, the HelpDesk will try to contact you. Otherwise, you should stop by the HelpDesk during our regular office hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday to reactivate your account.