The OIT Help Desk will operate under reduced hours for Spring Break as the Hughes-Trigg Student Center will be closed.
| March 5–6 | CLOSED |
| March 7–11 | 8:00 am – 6:00 pm |
| March 12–13 | CLOSED |
The emergency after-hours option will, of course, be available when the help desk is closed.
On Friday, our Chief Security Officer George Finney discussed the popularity of recent phone scams and how someone could hack you over the phone. While we focused on the cold-calling version of this scam, there is another popular one that masks itself as a warning pop-up notifying your that your system is infected. On this morning’s Today Show, Jeff Rossen showed how even national new anchor Natalie Morales can fall for one of these hacker tricks.
You can watch the full Rossen Report after the break.
Continue reading How to avoid the computer trap even TODAY’s Natalie Morales fell for
Members of the SMU Community have reported a number of phone calls in the last several weeks attempting to gain access to your computer. Usually, these callers will indicate that they have “noticed” that your computer has been infected with malware and will helpfully offer to fix it for you while on the phone. The caller will direct you to a website and request that you download software to help fix your PC, but you will actually be downloading malware. This will usually lock your computer and the person will require you to pay hundreds of dollars to unlock it. Continue reading Phone Scam: Hacking Over The Phone
The new campus voice mail service (Exchange Unified Messaging) has a feature which provides text transcriptions of voice mail messages to the Inbox by default. The accuracy of these text transcriptions may suffer for callers with accents, or poor quality calls (e..g, cell phone callers with bad reception).
We expect the accuracy of these transcriptions to improve when we upgrade the system within the coming months. However, some users may wish to opt out of text transcriptions and check their voice mail by either playing the audio attachment or by dialing into the system at extension 88673. Here is how to disable the transcription feature:
SMU’s transition to a new residential management system has completed quickly and quietly. First year and returning students are now using StarRez to apply for housing.
Residence Life & Student Housing have partnered with OIT to seek, purchase, and implement this new application. RLSH sought a simpler user interface for both students and for RLSH staff. In fact, it was so simple RLSH staff noted they were able to handle a typically busy day with one key staff member out.
This project is an example of the success when there is a strong partnership between the business unit and OIT.
