Job Phishing Alert: Department of Psychology

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 21:25:43 -0400
notice

Recently, the Division of Information Technology(DOIT) received multiple reports of a job phishing email. The scammers sending these emails are impersonating Professor Cheah of the Department of Psychology. Below is an example of such an email. For privacy purposes, we removed the To field.

From: Department of Psychology <timothyj.sloan2@gmail.com>

Date: Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 12:38 PM

Subject: Fall 2021 Campus Job Offer

To: <YOUR CAMPUS ID@umbc.edu>

<YOUR CAMPUS ID>@umbc.edu

The services of a student administrative assistant is urgently required to work part-time and get paid $300 weekly. Tasks will be carried out remotely and work time is 7hrs/week.

If interested, send a copy of your updated resume and a functional whatsapp number to our Department of Psychology via this email address to proceed.

Sincerely

Charissa Cheah

Professor

Department of Psychology

Office: Math/Psychology 330

Lab: Sondheim 404

Please note that the Psychology Department or Professor Cheah did not send this message. Three visible red flags in this email are:

1. The From address is not a UMBC email. If the Psychology Department or Prof. Cheah were sending this email, the From address would have been a UMBC email address. However, it was sent from <timothyj.sloan2@gmail.com>, which is not a UMBC affiliate. Please note that it could have been spoofed, even if it appears to originate from a UMBC email. Therefore, always check with DoIT(security@umbc.edu) or email/contact the impersonated person on a completely different email when you see a conflict in the address.

2. Whatsapp number. A lot of scammers will ask for your WhatsApp number. If their number gets reported, they could easily create a new one. The same can be said for an email address; however, if their email is blocked, they will lose responses from other phishing email recipients. If you ever receive a job offer asking for a WhatsApp number or a phone number in general, BE SUSPICIOUS!

3. The email template. This template is very common. After a quick Google search, we found three Job scams articles with the same template. So if you are ever in doubt, Google it! UMBC will not use a known phishing template to offer you a job opportunity.

For more information about phishing, visit: https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=98136.

If you have received any message similar to the one listed above, please forward it with its headers to security@umbc.edu. For instructions, visit: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________