News - False email warning

E-government Unit warns of false www.govt.nz emails

19 March 2004

The E-government Unit of the State Services Commission is cautioning Internet users to be wary of emails pretending to come from the all-of-government web portal www.govt.nz

The Director of the Unit, Laurence Millar, said that the Unit has been advised of some emails being sent to Internet users that are falsely using "govt.nz" in the originating address.

"These fraudulent emails were an example of a virus predicated on an abuse of trust, similar to 'phishing,'.

Mr Millar said www.govt.nz is a domain name and not an email address.

"People should be aware that there is no mailing list from this domain," he said.

"Internet users should be extremely careful with regard to unsolicited email, particularly those with attachments or requiring the installation of executable files on the user's system."

"The Internet is a global public shared network that is largely unregulated. While it offers many benefits, there are some drawbacks to this environment. One of these is that it is open to exploitation. Phishing is just another example of unscrupulous abuse of the Net."

The E-government Unit has been working on developing solutions to mitigate against these types of attacks. For example, the Secure Electronic Environment (SEE) and the Unit's Authentication project, are both aimed at delivering a secure and trusted means of communicating electronically with government to ensure the authenticity of both parties.

For more information on the Secure Electronic Environment, go to: http://www.e-government.govt.nz/see/

For more information on Authentication, go to: http://www.e-government.govt.nz/authentication/