NOVEMBER 7, 2018 | VOLUME 89, ISSUE 11
The official student newspaper of Quinnipiac University since 1929
OPINION: ATHLETE MENTAL HEALTH P. 7
SPORTS: BASKETBALL PREVIEWS P. 14
ARTS & LIFE: VOTING SPREAD P. 8
Saying ‘thank you’ to our veterans
Spam scam Students receive ‘Sextortion Blackmail’ spam emails By EMILY DISALVO Staff Writer
eteran, “Thank a v now you let them k e and appreciat ice the sacrif e z i n g o c re made to they have m.”– our freedo protect y
Stahl -Michaeesl e id nt, SVO Vice Pr
PHOTOS BY JESSICA RUDERMAN ; DESIGN BY MADISON FRAITAG
The Student Veterans Organization (SVO) had it’s annual Cup of G.I. Joe event Tuesday Nov. 6 outside the Carl Hansen Student Center. The Student Veterans Organization (SVO) with free coffee, doughnuts and the chance Hockey game on Saturday, a food drive at the hosts two events a year, thanking the student to sign cards for care packages sent to troops Rocky Top Student Center on Sunday, and population and staff for it’s support and ac- deployed overseas. Other events this week Veterans will also be honored at the Men’s ceptance. Cup of G.I. Joe is an SVO event will include, Chuck-A-Puck at the Men’s Ice basketball game Nov. 15.
First year integrity
Students attend academic integrity sessions Staff Writer
Our award-winning website since 2009.
MEGAN LOWE / CHRONICLE
Miller led the discussion on ways to identify plagiarism students don’t normally understand.
demonstrated a scenario where a student named Jonah gave his essay to his friend, Tara in order to help her with formatting her own essay. However, Tara ended up copying Jonah’s entire essay and said it was her own. “Under the academic integrity policy, they are both at fault,” Miller explained to the audience. “This is plagiarism. She took somebody else’s work, not just even a few words but the entire paper. But Jonah’s got a problem too, this is facilitation. He enabled
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As the fall semester draws to a close, faculty members are reminding first year students who are enrolled in First Year Seminar (FYS) courses to adhere to the university’s academic integrity. Mandatory sessions were held in Buckman theater on Nov. 5 and 6 to discuss the causes of violation and how to prevent them from occurring. These sessions ran between 8 a.m. to 5 p.m, replacing the students’ normally scheduled FYS classes. It is more likely for first year students to violate integrity since they are still fairly new to the academic community. Professor of athletic training & sports medicine Lennart Johns said that the students will be asked to write more papers and complete group projects in FYS, which is a big reason for why they were told to attend the seminar. “In the past, freshman were introduced to (academic integrity) during welcome weekend, but with a firehose of information, around many topics, being provided to freshman during those few days, some of that information gets lost,” Johns said in a statement. “With that in mind, we are working with the idea of reinforcing important information over a broader time period and this is an example of that effort.” Professor of legal studies Michelle Miller hosted one of the many sessions, where she opened her presentation with a brief roleplay between two peer catalysts. They
the plagiarism by giving her this paper. It’s not like he intended to violate the policy. He wanted to help a friend, but facilitation is still against the code of academic integrity.” Miller said that this type of scenario happens all too often at the university. “One of the reasons why we like to start with this (example) is because we see this a lot,” Miller said. “The thing about this situation is you guys have friends and you really want to help your friends and you’re not really thinking about academic integrity.” More examples like this were given, and students discussed amongst themselves whether or not they considered them to be violations. One of the answers was particularly surprising to the audience, where in an example a student was considered to be plagiarizing a textbook for writing a word-for-word introduction of the textbook for her essay, despite citing it and claiming that it wasn’t her words. “What do you think the purpose of the assignment was for the professor? Did the professor want to know if (she) could read the lab manual?,” Miller said. “The purpose of this exercise was not to read the lab manual. We’d want them to figure it out for themselves.” Plagiarizing can go beyond just copying off other people’s work; it can also include turning in a paper that’s already been submitted for a grade in another course, paraphras-
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By JENNIE TORRES
If you’ve recently received an email on your Quinnipiac account stating that an unknown sender has a video of you watching porn and that you must pay in order to keep this information private, then you are a victim of a “Sextortion Blackmail Scam” affecting members of the Quinnipiac community. Krebson Security, a website for in depth security news and investigation states that the scam email includes a message from a supposed, “hacker who’s compromised your computer and used your webcam to record a video of you while you were watching porn. The missive threatens to release the video to all your contacts unless you pay a Bitcoin ransom.” According to a MyQ alert that was posted on Nov. 1, the emails that Quinnipiac faculty, staff and students are receiving, include a “new twist” on this spam email that has been circulating for months. “The new twist with this particular scam is that the email includes a password previously associated with the recipient’s email address for an online account—likely a compromised password that was used many years ago,” stated Brian Kelly, the chief information security officer at Quinnipiac, in a statement included in the MyQ alert. Kelly says that this variation on a known spam email is a clever trick on the part of the hackers. “Most people go, ‘Yeah I haven’t been on porn sites or anything,’” Kelly said. “But what freaks people out is it’s a password that they’ve used somewhere in their life. It’s familiar. So that’s what grabs that users attention.” The Krebson Security website states that the recipient’s password is included in the salutation of the email as a scare tactic reading,“I’m aware that <substitute password formerly used by recipient here> is your password.” While this is an email being sent to Quinnipiac addresses, the passwords that have been compromised are not from Quinnipiac accounts. Kelly explains that the reason the spam is coming to the QU address is because of people’s tendency to use that address on other websites. “What happens is, people tend to use their Quinnipiac email address for everything, right? So maybe you’ve got a credit card that you use while you’re on campus and those statements come to your Quinnipiac email address,” Kelly said. “Any of those places where they could have been compromised have your Quinnipiac email address.” Typically, these passwords are old, and may be inactive. However, this is just another devious maneuver on the part of the “bad guys” according to Kelly. It’s a way for them to monetize off of seemingly useless
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