STA Travel has closed its Memorial Union office permanently, but will continue to serve faculty and staff through a new dedicated phone line and email account, according to a company memo. The closure took effect Dec. 13.

Service by telephone, (800) 616-1299, and email, uccorporate@statravel.com, is available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

“The agents receiving these calls have been fully briefed on UC Davis business travel policies and procedures and will be on the ready,” according to the memo. “Thank you for your continued support of STA Travel. We value our partnership with UC Davis and will continue to support you.”

Tentative labor deal with UPTE units

The UC Office of the President announced Dec. 15 that it has reached tentative, multiyear labor agreements covering more than 12,000 health care, research and technical employees.

The three bargaining groups, all represented by the University Professional and Technical Employees union, are expected to vote on the agreements this week, according to UCOP. Here are the details.

Three other bargaining units recently ratified new deals with the university: lecturers, librarians and police officers, and UCOP has announced a tentative deal with nurses.

Security alert for Adobe account holders

Information and Educational Technology has issued a security alert for UC Davis email account holders who used their campus email addresses when opening Adobe software accounts:

You should consider changing your campus email passphrase, and you should definitely change it — if you have not done so already — if you use the same phrase for your campus email and Adobe accounts. Why? Because, after a hacking incident at Adobe Systems Inc. earlier this fall, if someone has your Adobe passphrase, he or she could get into your campus email, too.

In the Adobe hacking, someone stole information for some 150 million accounts.

The incident threatened about 7,000 UC Davis email accounts, as best as IET analysts could determine. They found that about half of these account holders “used password practices that fell far short of secure.”

According to IET, some of the account holders used password-reset questions and hints that were easy to guess, and, even worse, some users probably used the same password for their UC Davis and Adobe accounts.

Read the IET TechNews article.

’Tis the season for online scams

More advice from Infornation and Educational Technology: Keep alert for seasonal online security risks and scams that target places like mobile shopping apps and your email inbox.

Scams can occur any time of year, but some criminals try to exploit the distractions, commerce and work patterns of the holiday season.

The phony email messages often sound urgent, or even alarming. “The ‘Your email is over quota’ and ‘Help, I’m stranded overseas’ scam emails were the two we saw most frequently during winter break last year,” said Mike Waid, lead consultant for UC Davis’ IT Express Computing Services Help Desk.

Read the IET TechNews article.

Bioletti Way closed at bike path

Bioletti Way is closed this winter break at the Giedt Hall-Kemper Hall bike path, for road work, through Friday, Jan. 3, according to an announcement from Design and Construction Management.

Drivers can still be able to go to and from Bainer Hall Drive, by using Bioletti Way off La Rue Road; and to and from Lot 42, by using Bioletti Way off Hutchison Drive.