Information Technology

Remember the theft of 3 billion Yahoo passwords back in 2013? It’s a stark reminder that using the same password for multiple accounts is risky business.  If you use your Amherst password for any other online service, we strongly recommend you reset both your Amherst and other service passwords as soon as possible. You may change your Amherst password from the Tools & Resources sub-menu of the college website main menu. We highly discourage you from reusing the password of your Amherst account with other services. Please contact AskIT@amherst.edu for more information.

In response to a student initiative, the college is switching to Comcast’s Xfinity on Campus for its cable TV service starting July 1, 2018. This means that every TV on campus which receives its programming via a coax cable from the wall will no longer receive any programming.  (The Guide Channel -- channels 2 and 2.1 – may continue to appear for a few days, but will expire shortly and then show only “No Information”.

Offices wishing to continue access to cable programming should contact AskIT@amherst.edu to discuss available options.  Students will be able to access cable programming in their residences via internet over the device(s) of their choice and may subscribe to premium channels as they wish.  Common spaces in residence halls will receive programming via Roku or similar devices.

Students may log into Xfinity on Campus with their Amherst credentials to access streaming live and recorded programming. 

Please contact AskIT@amherst.edu if you have any questions.

Email notifications have gone out to employees and new students about CyberSecurity Training, which is provided by the SANS Institute. You can access the training site using the link below.

When do you lose your email account? What email address should you use on applications and resumes? How do you get transcripts? Learn what you need to know about your technology life after Amherst.

A recent Windows update may be keeping you from connecting to various college servers via RDP. 

Late yesterday afternoon an email with the subject line "{SPAM?} URGENT: Emergency Situation on Campus" was sent to about 1000 mailboxes on campus. The From address was "Courtney Flint <Courtney.Flint@usu.edu>."

The fact that the message was labelled SPAM and had a non-Amherst sending address were huge indicators that the message was fake, as was the URL of the login screen presented to you if you persisted in clicking the VIEW link in the message. Despite this, a couple of dozen members of the community ignored the obvious and gave up their Amherst usernames and passwords to the scammers, thus compromising their accounts and the security of College systems. 

If you can't log into your Amherst account this morning please come to the Help Desk on the first floor of Seeley Mudd and we will help you set a new password for your account.

If at this late date you still do not know how to tell whether you are on a real Amherst login page or a fake one, please read Don't Get Phished: How to Know Where you are Loggin in.

Please contact AskIT with any questions.

Scammers are sending phishing emails to Amherst mailboxes with the above subject line. Do not respond to the message or click the SIGN IN HERE link. If you clicked the link and entered your Amherst username and password, change your Amherst password immediately. If you can't change your password, contact AskIT.

If you are getting a login prompt or a prompt to enter a license number when you open an Adobe product on an IT-supplied computer, see the information on the link below.