Re: Groupspaces...is it social engineering or a desired campus server.

[Steve Kuchta <skuchta () VCU EDU>]

Wayne,

I have never heard of GroupSpaces, but they do appear to be a legit 
company based out of London. It looks like they use WePay for money 
collection, though I'm not familiar with them either. Here are their 
CrunchBase profiles which has some information about them.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/groupspaces
http://www.crunchbase.com/company/wepay

Thanks,
Steve

Steve Kuchta
skuchta () vcu edu <mailto:skuchta () vcu edu>
Infrastructure Support Analyst
Infrastructure and Client Services
School of Medicine Technology Services
Virginia Commonwealth University
http://go.vcu.edu/somtech

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On 8/29/2011 11:40 AM, Hauber, Wayne [ITSEC] wrote:
> I have questions about Groupspaces.com. It appears to be an 
> organization that aggressively markets its services to student 
> organizations. They found a way to mine lists of student organization 
> at ISU then invited the officers of ISU clubs to use their services to 
> manage their clubs.
>
> Background: I first heard about Groupspaces from my daughter, a 
> student at ISU, who received an e-mail from them in April 2011. The 
> Groupspaces folks decided that she was an officer on her dorm floor 
> and wanted her to use their services. She was never an officer on her 
> dorm floor but **is** the daughter of a security analyst and knows 
> enough to be concerned. We learned of other badly targeted e-mails and 
> investigated. Our university has no contractual relationship with 
> Groupspaces.  We noticed that it has existed for a while and may be a 
> real service. We eventually let the matter drop.
>
> On Friday, I learned that Groupspaces was sending badly targeted 
> e-mails to students again. A counselor wondered if they were trustworthy.
>
> I investigated and notice that Groupspaces offers many services to 
> clubs. One notable service is dues collection. Apparently, Groupspaces 
> will handle dues collection from your members and can use paypal and 
> credit cards for collection. I decided that I could not tell the 
> difference between Groupspaces and some sort of elegant social 
> engineering/phishing scheme and temporarily blocked groupspaces.com at 
> our campus border.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1.Is anyone familiar with Groupspaces.com and can tell us more about them?
>
> 2.Are they trustworthy?
>
> 3.Has your Treasurer's office decided that Groupspaces.com can be 
> trusted with dues collection from your students?
>
> 4.What do they charge student organizations?
>
> 5.Has your school entered into a contractual relationship with 
> Groupspaces.com?
>
> Wayne Hauber (515) 294-9890
>
> Iowa State University
>
> Information Technology Services
>
> IT Security and Policies
>
> 297 Durham Center, ISU, Ames, Iowa 50011
>
> wjhauber () iastate edu <mailto:wjhauber () iastate edu>