Smartphone Insight has published a handy guide with step-by-step instructions to protect your IoS or Android phone data. With these 17 tips, your device will continuously be up to date. In addition, you will see the cool tricks and tips available on your phone to help encrypt your phone data, best practices to use while in public, and how to secure your data and phone while browsing the internet.

 To read the guide visit: https://smartphoneinsight.com/how-to-keep-your-phone-secure/

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Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. For instructions, visit: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

Follow us on myUMBC:https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/itsecurity.

On September 13, 2021, the domain registrar and web hosting company, Epik, suffered a data breach. This breach contained data for approximately 15 million Epik and non-Epik customers. Allegedly, this was done in retaliation for hosting alt-right websites. The information included email addresses, names, phone numbers, geographical addresses, purchases, and WHOIS records.

The compromised accounts were subsequently made public.  Fifty-three UMBC accounts were victims of this breach. The victims are being notified via their UMBC emails and/or their alternate emails. If you have an Epik account, please contact them to see if you have been affected by this breach.

To see if you were involved in any other breach, visit: https://haveibeenpwned.com/.

More about Epik data breach:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/21/politics/anonymous-epik-hack/index.html

If you have any questions or concerns, email us at: security@umbc.edu.

Information about this breach was provided to us by Have I Been Pwned(HIBP). 

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Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. For instructions, visit: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

Follow us on myUMBC:https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/itsecurity.

Shifting to teaching in online and hybrid formats has created opportunities to identify how students can share multimedia projects and receive feedback through peer critique. While various tools support multimedia, faculty often wonder what tools can enhance asynchronous peer engagement for multimedia projects and how to use these tools with Blackboard.

UMBC community members have used asynchronous tools like VoiceThread for multimedia engagement. VoiceThread is a learning tool for enhancing student engagement and online presence. With VoiceThread, instructors and students can create, share, and comment on images, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, videos, audio files, documents, and PDFs, using text, a microphone, webcam, phone, and audio-file upload. 

The VoiceThread platform supported communication between presenters and visitors at conferences like URCAD, USM LSAMP, and SURF. In addition, faculty incorporate VoiceThread in Blackboard to share lectures, presentations, and student work. The most recent feature for VoiceThread in Blackboard, VoiceThread Assignments, creates a new level of integration between student work, collaboration, and Blackboard.

Kristen Anchor, Lecturer, Media and Communication Studies (MCS), uses VoiceThread Assignments in her MCS courses. She devised several innovative approaches to manage and facilitate media project assignments, peer learning, and peer critique. For Anchor, peer critique is an integral part of the learning and creative process. She explains to students, "Critique is helpful for two reasons: (1) Getting feedback on your work, and (2) practicing your visual and communication skills about media (as the critic)." How can instructors design online courses with asynchronous components to support this essential student interaction? Anchor finds VoiceThread helps students achieve course goals and meets the instructional need to support multimedia projects and peer engagement.

Anchor thoughtfully delivers VoiceThread assignments by providing students with assignment instructions and reference guides for using VoiceThread. She presents students with assignment instructions within Blackboard and again after they launch the VoiceThread Assignment. Students receive project examples as references with their assignment instructions. Anchor uses the VoiceThread Student Gallery for each project, an optional feature that faculty can select when creating a VoiceThread Assignment, to support peer critique.

The Student Gallery feature makes peer critique in VoiceThread possible; it allows students to see submissions from their peers and add audio, video, and text-based comments, allowing for asynchronous peer feedback sessions.

Kristen Anchor will share her excellent ideas about using VoiceThread to support student projects and engagement, along with tips, tricks, and thoughts for faculty considering adopting VoiceThread for their instruction moving forward. Please register and join us Thursday, October 21st, at Noon to learn more.

~ By Josh Abrams

Email scams generally try to create a sense of urgency, often around money.  They either threaten the recipient with imminent financial loss or offer the promise of immediate financial gain as long as the recipient acts quickly.  This scam takes a more subtle approach by suggesting that the recipient has been confused with some company that can supply a product that Mr. Avila is looking for.  A supposed purchase order is attached and the recipient might well consider looking at it for more information.

Once downloaded and clicked, the attachment displays a web page asking for a username and password.  Whatever is entered, the user will get a message that the entry is invalid.  In the meantime, the entered information will be stored on a remote server (in Nigeria in this particular instance).  Eventually, that server will accumulate a list of account/password pairs from people all over the world.

The moral is: If you aren’t sure what’s in it, don’t click it!

For more information about phishing, visit:https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=98136.

If you have received any message similar to the one listed above, please forward it with its headers tosecurity@umbc.edu. For instructions, visit:https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

________________________________________________________________________

Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. For instructions, visit:https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

Follow us on myUMBC:https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/itsecurity.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Whenever you receive such emails, always try and verify with the senders on an entirely different email if you know them. Feel free to always send the message to us to validate the email.

For more information about phishing, visit:https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=98136.

If you have received any message similar to the one listed above, please forward it with its headers tosecurity@umbc.edu. For instructions, visit:https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

_________________________________________________________________________

Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. For instructions, visit:https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

Follow us on myUMBC:https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/itsecurity.