Re: Athens security scam

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

Years ago, at the time of the first online journals, I worked for a
subsidiary of a large corporation and, as security was very much a worry
among publishers at the time, I went to the top to make sure that I was
not going to have problems later on the basis that all my journals were
going to leak away to non-subscribers. The official view was that there
would be some leakage, in spite of all the efforts of librarians to stop
it, but that it was only systematic theft which was a worry.

What is described by Athens looks like systematic theft - of which as far
as I know there has been very little in the online environment. Does
anyone have any idea of who might be doing this and what they intend to do
with what they acquire in this way? As far as I know there has been very
little evidence of systematic theft and subsequent repackaging for sale,
but others might enlighten me.

Note that I am using the word "theft" for convenience and not making an
ideological statement.

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
> Subject: Athens security scam
> From: "Dave Budd" <d.budd@man.ac.uk>
> Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 09:18:06 -0000
> To: <endnote-interest@isiresearchsoft.com>
>
> I forward this for any EndNote users who use the Athens databases
>
> To: ATHENS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Urgent: Athens Security Scam
>
> The Athens team have received two separate reports from Southampton and
> Cambridge of users who have been asked to supply their Athens usernames
> and passwords to a group purporting to be from Athens. The actual email is
> attached.
>
> This is not genuine. This is a systematic attempt to breach the security
> of Athens by collecting genuine Athens usernames and passwords from
> unsuspecting users. Please advise your users not to supply these details
> to this query and indeed never to supply their password to anyone. The
> Athens team will never ask for your password, and never contacts users
> directly.
>
> Please inform the Athens Help Desk if any of your users receive these
> messages, and please forward the original message to us, if possible.
>
> We will keep you advised of this situation when we have more to report.
>
> Lyn Norris
>
> Athens Manager
>
> ------- End of forwarded message -------