«
»

Beware of fake FOCS site!

As most of you in theoretical computer science will know, the submission deadline for the 2019 FOCS conference is this Friday, April 5. The FOCS’2019 program committee chair, my UT Austin colleague David Zuckerman, has asked me to warn everyone that a fake submission site was set up at aconf.org—apparently as a phishing scam—and is one of the first results to come up when you google “FOCS 2019.” Do not submit there! The true URL is focs2019.cs.jhu.edu; accept no substitutes!

Anyway, I’ve been thrashing for several weeks—just barely escaping spaghettification at the Email Event Horizon—but I hope to be back shortly with your regularly scheduled programming.

Email, RSS Follow

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Announcements, Complexity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Beware of fake FOCS site!”

  1. William Hird Says:
    Comment #1 April 4th, 2019 at 7:58 pm

    Why would anyone want to phish FOCS conference papers ? I’m not in academia, enlighten me .

  2. Scott Says:
    Comment #2 April 5th, 2019 at 8:55 am

    William #1: Good question! I don’t know. But it could just be a robotic phishing operation that ensnared FOCS along with countless other things.

  3. Tom Wong Says:
    Comment #3 April 9th, 2019 at 10:14 am

    William #1: Here’s my guess: People often use the same password for multiple websites, so if they can capture your FOCS password, they may be able to access other websites. That’s why each website should have a different password.