Is this email from IndyLink?

There have been increasingly sophisticated attempts by spammers and viruses to send emails that appear to come from IndyLink. You may have seen similar phony emails that appear to come from other organizations, with subject lines such as "Ebay security alert: update account" or "Paypal info needs to be updated."

In this case, the emails appear to come from IndyLink and may warn you that your email account is being closed or that you have committed some kind of violation. The email may ask you to visit a Web site, open an attachment, or take some other action. These emails are not coming from IndyLink, and should be deleted immediately! The act of sending this kind of imitation email is called "phishing".

How to determine if an email is really from IndyLink

Here is some basic information that will help you distinguish phony IndyLink emails from legitimate messages in most cases:

• Emails from IndyLink will never have a county domain name attached (such as admin@indylink.org), but will instead only come from an address such as help@indylink.org address. However, keep in mind that a phony email may use the proper address.
• We will never send you information via attachment unless you are actively working with Help Desk and have discussed the attachment with us ahead of time.
• If we are directing you to a page on our Web site, we will give you the address for the home page and then instructions for navigating to the site from there. Some of the phony messages contain links that appear to be on IndyLink, but will redirect you elsewhere.
• We will never ask you for account information via email, or ask you to "confirm" account information on a Web site. Never email your account password to us or to anyone else, as email communications may be intercepted. We will not call you to ask for this information either, unless we are returning your call.
• If you aren't sure if a message is legitimate, call us to ask!

Other hints and tips about your privacy and security

IndyLink's privacy policy: "As a nonprofit community network, IndyLink respects the privacy of its users and strives to protect that privacy. The IndyLink Board of Directors, therefore, resolves that mailing lists of IndyLink users will not be sold, shared or exchanged (except where required by law)."

Security tips: Do not respond to any junk email (spam)of any kind, even to unsubscribe, because that only confirms that they have gotten a response from an active email account. If you buy something as a response to an email, they then have your financial information.

Filtering Email: As part of our commitment to bring you the best Internet service available, IndyLink has partnered with email filtering leader Postini to offer you the latest virus-prevention and anti-spam tools available. Postini has been rated the number one anti-spam product on the market. Its services are private and secure. The junk email and virus protection is an automated process. Nobody has access to your email except you. Nobody will read your email. Your email is not censored, and YOU control the filter settings. You can read more about Postini here.

Anti-virus and Anti-spyware Software: If you have Windows, and don't have antivirus software or your antivirus software is about to expire, there is a good free antivirus program (AVG) available to download here. You should also get Spybot and Ad-Aware (both also free),if you don't have any protection against spyware.

Firewalls: You should consider adding a firewall if you have Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows Millineum Edition (ME). Zone Alarm has a free program available here. Windows XP users may check out this web page for instructions on disabling the built-in XP firewall, so you can install the free Zone Alarm.

Wireless users should definitely consider getting firewall software because you are continuously online with a broadband connection and are more at risk. Good information to start with is located here and here.

Apple Macintosh users with OS X have a built in firewall. Click on the apple, then System Preferences, then Sharing. There are settings here for various security features. Mac OS 9 users may investigate various firewall solutions using this Google search.