You may have heard on the news items about Russians hacking into various government and business organizations, The Department of Energy for example.

     Here, I have seen an approximately 3x increase in hacking activity in the last month, the majority of it in the form of e-mail phishing scams, and a non-trivial percentage from Russian hosts.  This does not necessarily mean the hackers are Russians, they could be any hacker that has gained access to the Russian servers.  If you have all of your life savings drained from your bank account, it really does not matter, so to prevent that please follow these instructions carefully:

     If you receive an e-mail allegedly from us or your bank or other financial institution requiring you to click on a link and provide authentication information for any reason, DO NOT DO IT.  Instead, if you THINK the mail may be real, then go to that institutions website directly, NOT by clicking on the link in the e-mail (which may take you some place other than advertised) but designed to LOOK like the target site, and check directly with that site. When you reach the target site, make sure your web browser has the lock symbol indicating an encrypted site AND that the domain is correct.