By MARTY LEVINE
Spammers are increasingly targeting Pitt employees with pitches for retirement and investment counseling. Some come from real people in the financial advising business — outside of Pitt — who are soliciting business, but many are just spam, phishing for you to click on a malicious link or respond and provide personal information to the spammer.
One such recent spam from “scheduler+retirementexpert.net@ccsend.com” had the subject line: “Retirement And Pension Meetings for University of Pittsburgh Employees” and began: “As a valued employee of the University of Pittsburgh, you are eligible to receive a free consultation for answers to your retirement benefit questions.”
Law librarian Linda Tashbook, chair of the University Senate’s Benefits and Welfare Committee, “encourages colleagues to be conscientious consumers and, if they desire, to block these unwanted solicitations in Outlook.” She suggests that, instead of responding to such spam, Pitt faculty and staff arrange to talk with a consultant or advisor at Pitt’s retirement fund provider, TIAA, via a link on the HR website.
Pitt IT is aware of this latest spam onslaught. In just three weeks in September, for instance, Pitt IT blocked 5,500 messages from “scheduler+retirementexpert.net “ although about 700 were delivered (thanks to the spammer switching domain names, or Pitt employees allowing Outlook to let through spam, releasing the messages from quarantine…
