[Wactclc-alma] Fraudulent student accounts

[Guidry, Wade]

Kirsti, to prevent your changes from being overwritten, you could flip those accounts in Alma to internal at the same time you update the expiration date.

Since the patron load won't overwrite the matching record it finds if that matching record is internal, your changes would be safe from further alteration.



Wade Guidry
Library Consortium Services Manager, WACTCLC
wadeg at bigbend.edu<mailto:wadeg at bigbend.edu>
(509) 760-4474
http://www.wactclc.org<http://www.wactclc.org/>

From: Wactclc-alma <wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu> On Behalf Of Thomas, Kirsti
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 1:37 PM
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion <wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Wactclc-alma] Fraudulent student accounts

CAUTION: Originated outside our network. Do not click links or open attachments unless you validate the sender.


My only concern is that the expiration dates might get overwritten by the daily student load.

Right now our Student Services and eLearning staff are leaving the accounts as is-- with the exception of some kind of fraud block on their ctcLink account-- because they need to gather as much data as possible to be able to identify all the fraudulent accounts.

Right now all those accounts are still registered for classes and they'll probably stay that way for a few more days.

But it might be simplest to just keep the affected patron records in an itemized set and update the expiration dates manually every day while we work on a more long term solution.

Kirsti S. Thomas
Library Technical Services Manager
Seattle Colleges
kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu<mailto:kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu>



From: Wactclc-alma <wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu>> On Behalf Of Guidry, Wade
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 11:03
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion <wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Wactclc-alma] Fraudulent student accounts

Just FYI, you can expire any set of patrons (fraudulent or otherwise) pretty easily if you have a list of those primary IDs.

Simply create a managed set of those users and run them through the update/notify users job to set their expiration date in bulk.





Wade Guidry
Library Consortium Services Manager, WACTCLC
wadeg at bigbend.edu<mailto:wadeg at bigbend.edu>
(509) 760-4474
http://www.wactclc.org<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wactclc.org%2F&data=04%7C01%7C%7Cedf607d27e944025e12208d9d5fe37ce%7C02d8ff38d7114e31a9156cb5cff788df%7C0%7C0%7C637776110099131059%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=EqnW1SaEYwiXI7g2EPhxfARj0UgXhN%2FwD%2Bnjhtsm8n8%3D&reserved=0>

From: Wactclc-alma <wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:wactclc-alma-bounces at lists.ctc.edu>> On Behalf Of Thomas, Kirsti
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2022 5:56 PM
To: WACTCLC Alma Discussion <wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu<mailto:wactclc-alma at lists.ctc.edu>>
Subject: [Wactclc-alma] Fraudulent student accounts


Hey folks,

Our Student Services and eLearning staff recently identified just over 100 student accounts that seem to be fraudulent. The accounts seem to have been created for the purpose of obtaining money from Financial Aid.  All of the accounts identified are registered for classes this quarter.

Kevin Bowersox-Johnson, the eLearning director at Seattle Colleges, has contacted SBCTC and the State Auditor. He also sent an email out to the statewide eLearning Committee with details of how he was able to identify the fraudulent accounts.

Interestingly, one of the things Kevin discovered is that most of the address provided by these fraudulent accounts belong to properties up for sale.

I don't think there's much of a threat to the libraries from these accounts, but I'm going to be working with Kevin Bowersox-Johnson and our IT staff to flag/deactivate any of these accounts in Alma.

That's probably going to be a manual job for now, but we're going to work on figuring out how to update Alma user records when the accounts have been flagged as fraudulent in ctcLink. That may not happen until Spring Quarter or later.  I'll share details with Wade when I have them.

You all might want to contact your eLearning folks.

Kirsti S. Thomas
Library Technical Services Manager
Seattle Colleges
kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu<mailto:kirsti.thomas at seattlecolleges.edu>








CAUTION: This email originated outside of the Seattle Colleges' email system. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Questions? Contact IT Services at x6333 (Central), x3630 (North), x5844 (South) or email ITHelp at seattlecolleges.edu<mailto:ITHelp at seattlecolleges.edu>.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ctc.edu/pipermail/wactclc-alma_lists.ctc.edu/attachments/20220113/b8f71a8b/attachment-0002.html>