Do not blindly trust mail

The current wave of password phishing mails seems to provoke an unusually high attention rate.  People seem to think that mail allegedly coming from help@ethz.ch may be genuine.  The german text itself is so bad that its spammy character is obvious to long time mail users.

Remember: any part of a mail can be faked. This is in the design of the mail system and cannot be fixed without making mail usage a lot harder for everybody.  And even if we used a better system (like cryptographic signatures) the rest of the world would not follow.

Therefore, be sceptic about any mail until the complete impression including the writing style fits the picture.  No IT support worth their salt will ask you to reveal your password.  And if they do they deserve to be ignored!

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