Recent Phishing Emails
Many SSCC members recently received two "phishing" emails which pretended to be from the SSCC and requested that you email your username and password. This was unusual only in that it specifically mentioned the SSCC rather than the UW. Two reminders:
- SSCC staff will NEVER ask you for your SSCC password.
- Email from the SSCC will ALWAYS include the personal name of an SSCC staff member (see our staff page for a list). Messages from SSCC staff will usually be digitally signed, though technical limitations prevent us from digitally signing all email.
Email messages that break these rules can be deleted immediately—no need to confirm with or inform the SSCC Help Desk. For more details see Identifying Legitimate SSCC Email.
SSCC staff immediately blocked all mail from our server to the addresses mentioned in the phishing email. Usually the perpetrators of these messages are sophisticated enough to vary their messages so that they cannot be easily filtered, but since this one was not we now have a filter in place to block this particular message.
SSCC staff receive such messages at the same time as everyone else, so please do not forward them to the Help Desk. While it is normally SSCC policy to respond to every email sent to our Help Desk, in future phishing incidents we may not respond to messages about the incident that do not contain a question due to the large number of messages we receive at these times.
Visio, WordPerfect, and DBMS/COPY Removed from Winstat
As part of a recent review of our software licensing agreements we concluded that we were no longer strictly complying with Visio and Wordperfect's license agreement and to do so is prohibitively expensive. After contacting people who had used the software in the past year, we removed them from Winstat. These programs are not widely used, but we apologize to those who are affected. We also removed DBMS/COPY because almost everyone uses Stat/Transfer now.
Summer Training
It's not too late to participate in summer training. This month we have Nvivo training. A second round of R and Stata classes are scheduled for the last week of August. The challenge with August classes is that many people who would benefit from them do not yet realize they need to learn a statistical package or do not yet know about SSCC classes. If you know of anyone in this situation, perhaps a new RA or the students in a class you're teaching in the fall, we (and they) would appreciate you making them aware of this opportunity. Visit our training page for details and to register.
Tip: Purchase USB 3.0 Compatible External Storage Devices
USB 3.0 is now standard on most PCs and Macs, including new computers we prepare e-quotes for when you ask us for recommendations. If you plan to purchase flash drives or external hard drives, make sure it is USB 3.0. USB 3.0 devices are backward compatible with USB 2.0, so even if you get a USB 3.0 device before you get a new computer, you will be able to use it with your older computer's USB 2.0 ports.
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