Phish Bowl Alerts
Just a reminder that phishing can assume a variety of forms (threat, request for aid, job opportunity, prize) as well as delivery methods (e.g., email, text, phone, USPS, in-person). This post is about a kind of threat, a copyright infringement takedown notice, sent via email, and what to watch out for.
Last October the Phish Bowl article Beware copyright infringement warnings bearing malware described fake copyright warnings that may arrive via a contact form web page, usually pointing to an apparent Google site that can trick you into installing ransomware.
This purpose of this posting is to provide a few more details about notifications of claimed infringement, or "takedown notices" as they are often called. The U.S. Copyright Office describes what official notices must contain, and must be sent to the Internet Service Provider's designated DMCA agent in writing. At Brown, all legitimate copyright "takedown notices" must be directed to copyright@brown.edu.
For more background, see Brown's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Compliance Policy and its companion procedural document. See also the Venable LLP article Nonprofit Organizations Beware: Is This a Legitimate Copyright Infringement Takedown Notice or a Phishing Scam? that inspired this post.